


Imagine Death

by chiiyo86



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Banshee Lydia Martin, Cage Fights, Captivity, Exhibitionism, F/F, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-01-19
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:16:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 43,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5559476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night, Allison, Scott, and Stiles go missing. They vanish into the thin air, leaving their familes without a clue about what happened to them. Lydia is left adrift by their absence and the uncertainty of their fate, but also frustrated that she doesn't know how to help find them. At least, until she discovers that the ritual with the Nemeton left her with a connection of sorts to her missing friends, and from then on she's determined to master her powers and save her friends. Meanwhile Scott, Allison, and Stiles, having only each other to rely on, must fight for their survival and decide just how far they're willing to go to stay alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sixtywattgloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtywattgloom/gifts).



> Dear sixtywattgloom, I happen to agree with you that Teen Wolf was made for poly shipping, so thank you for giving me the opportunity to write it! I didn't really intend to spawn that monster, but it happened and I really hope you enjoy the fic. Because otherwise I just inflicted 40+k of a fic you don't like on you, and then I'm sorry.
> 
> Thank you to within_a_dream for helping as a beta!
> 
> This fic goes AU somewhere at the end of 3A/beginning of 3B (although I borrowed elements from later seasons). I tried to make it clear in the fic, but basically, Derek left with Cora and Isaac for South America at the end of 3A (and is still their Alpha. I think. It doesn't matter for the fic anyway), and the fic happens after the events of 3A. They know Malia is a coyote, but Scott hasn't been able to turn her back into a human.

Lydia could feel the sun that filtered through the curtains caress her face, teasing her out of sleep. Her first conscious thought, coming before any attempt to assess her body's needs or musing about the new day, was, _'This is day eight. Allison, Scott, and Stiles have been missing for seven days.'_

She couldn't control the memories that automatically followed: Chris Argent calling her to ask if she knew where Allison was, then the Sheriff calling to ask the same thing about Scott and Stiles. The day she'd spent glued to her phone, waiting for one of them to text her and tell her about the latest supernatural mishap they'd been caught into, reassuring her that they were fine, apologizing for worrying her. And then, finally, another of Sheriff Stilinski's calls, informing Lydia that that an AMBER alert had been triggered and her friends been officially declared missing. Vanished into the night, like they'd been a mirage that had just dissipated one day.

Lydia felt tears leak at the corner of her eyes and decided it was time to get up and get ready for the day. She didn't want to get her pillow wet again. She put on the clothes she had prepared the day before, carefully applied makeup to look as immaculate as ever. The movements were so automatic that she didn't feel fully awake until she was almost finished.

Opening up her wardrobe, she looked through it for some kind of accessory she could add to the dress she was wearing. For once, the sight of all her clothes overwhelmed rather than comforted her. She took a deep breath, which caught in her throat when her eyes fell on a midnight blue cardigan that belonged to Allison—she'd forgotten it here the last time she had slept over. The color clashed with the pink dress Lydia was wearing, but after a moment of hesitation, she shrugged out of the sweater she had on and exchanged it for Allison's cardigan. She brought it to her face before putting it on, but her mother had washed it and it didn't smell like Allison's perfume anymore. She closed the wardrobe and leaned her back against the door, trying to breathe. When she saw it wasn't working, she allowed herself a few sobs.

The last thing she'd done yesterday before going to bed had been to call the Sheriff to check on the news about Stiles, Allison, and Scott, just as she'd done every day since they'd gone missing. The man had sounded worn out, each of his word heavy with the weight of his terror and grief, and she'd tried to find something comforting to tell him but hadn't come up with anything worth saying. There was nothing that didn't sound hollow and false.

Hollow was exactly how Lydia felt as she delicately dabbed her eyes after barely a minute of crying, careful not to smear any of her makeup. She sat at her vanity table and looked herself in the mirror to see if anything needed to be reapplied. Her tears had subsided and her anxiety settled back deep in her chest where it would sit all day, making every one of her moves a little harder than usual. 

A knock on her door, and her mother called, “Lydia, are you ready? You're going to be late for school.”

Lydia opened her mouth to answer, but her voice caught and she had to clear her throat before she could speak. “I'm almost ready.”

She thought she'd sounded normal, but her mother still opened the door and leaned inside. “Oh, honey,” she said, giving Lydia a sad look. “You don't have to go to school if you don't feel up for it.”

“I'll be fine,” Lydia said, fiddling with her mascara. It wasn't exactly that she _wanted_ , or even needed, to go to school, but what else could she do? At least class would be mildly distracting.

Her mother stepped behind her and put her hands on her shoulders. Lydia focused on the reflection of her mother's perfectly manicured hands in the mirror. “The police will find them. You know Sheriff Stilinski's doing everything in his power.”

“I know.”

Just as she knew what her mother didn't know, which was that Chris Argent was also moving heaven and earth through slightly different channels, and that Derek Hale had come back from wherever he'd taken Cora and Isaac—South America, she thought—to help with the search. Even the twins were helping, and maybe their actions were a bit self-interested, since they were aiming to become part of Scott's pack, but it didn't matter what their motivations were. Lydia had faith that all these people wouldn’t rest until Allison, Scott, and Stiles were brought home safe and sound; what was hard to swallow was the fact that there was nothing _she_ could do. Her brand new banshee powers were worse than useless, because even if she could control them, there was nothing she wanted less than to be the one to find her friends' dead bodies. 

“Mom, I need to finish getting ready.”

Her mother sighed and squeezed her shoulders, then left the room, closing the door behind her with a soft _click_. Left alone, Lydia let out a shuddering breath.

School was noisy and crowded, as it always was, and Lydia made her way through her fellow students with the determination of a general going to battle. It was muscle memory by now, and everyone parted before her almost unconsciously. Everything went just as routine dictated. The first few days Lydia had caught bits and pieces of conversation about Scott, Stiles, and Allison's disappearance, but with no new information the rumor mill seemed to have exhausted the topic. Life went on as usual, as if Lydia's friends being there or not made no difference. Odd to think that not so long ago it wouldn't have made much of a difference to Lydia either: she hadn't met Allison yet, and Scott and Stiles were barely a blip on her radar. Now, though, just going through the day without them felt like a chore.

Time passed sluggishly, none of the classes challenging enough to need more than a fraction of Lydia's attention. By midday she had a headache and was seriously considering going home at the end of the period, and to hell with her afternoon classes. She glanced at the clock for the fifth time: still ten minutes to suffer through before freedom.

Her math teacher droned on and on, periodically turning his back on the class to write on the board. Someone chucked a paper ball at him, but it missed its target and the teacher didn't notice; a few immature chuckles followed. There was a mistake in one of the equations the teacher had written earlier, but Lydia knew better than to point it out. Some teachers could handle being corrected by their students, but he wasn't one of them. She pressed her fingers to her temple and started rubbing circles there. Her headache was getting worse, and it wasn't helped by the hubbub from outside. She looked in direction of the window, irritated, but they were on the top floor and all she could see was a piece of the sky.

“Lydia, are you okay?” This was Danny, sitting next to her across the aisle.

“I'm fine,” she said. “It's just—the noise.”

“The noise?”

“Yes, those people outside—” 

There must have been a crowd of them to be so loud, and now Lydia had to wonder what so many students could be doing out of class—unless they weren’t students at all? They were shouting excitedly, like the audience at a concert. At first it had been nothing distinct, but now the crowd had united into a chorus and a single word echoed, pulsing through the air like a heartbeat. Lydia tried to focus on it— _ill, kill, kill, kill, KILL_.

Lydia startled, heart in her throat.

“Lydia?” Danny asked.

“Can you hear that? What're they doing out there?”

“Who's doing what?”

“The _crowd outside_ ,” Lydia hissed. 

She'd talked a little too loudly, and the teacher frowned at her. “Miss Martin, can you concentrate on the lesson, please?”

“Excuse me,” Lydia said, trying her hardest to sound composed. “Can I go to the bathroom, please? I'm feeling a little sick.”

The teacher obviously wasn't happy with it, but he wasn't Harris' level of heartless, so he gave her a reluctant nod and she bolted from her chair.

She wandered the hallways, but nowhere was safe from the racket. She ended up leaning against a locker, her forehead pressed against the cool metal. Then she realized it was Scott's locker, and that Stiles' was just next to it, and she almost burst into tears. 

“Um,” said someone to her left. “Are you—are you alright?”

Lydia sighed. She was tired of being asked that question, and didn't want to talk to anyone right now, but she forced herself to turn and face the newcomer: she looked familiar, and after a moment Lydia recognized her as Kira, the history teacher's daughter. The girl who had a crush on Scott and had done research for him about _bardo_. She wore her hair in a ponytail thrown over her shoulder, and looked at Lydia with wide eyes. There was a nervousness about her that reminded Lydia of Stiles, albeit a shyer and gentler version of him. Lydia immediately resented Kira for her association to both Scott and Stiles.

“I'm perfectly alright,” she said, more peevishly than the question warranted.

Kira's face fell. “I'm sorry, that was a stupid question. Of course, you're not alright, your friends—”

Lydia had never wanted anyone to shut up more than she did now, and she was friends with Stiles. “Can you hear that ruckus outside?” she asked, interrupting Kira's nascent babble.

“Uh? You mean, the other students around us?”

The bell had rung since Lydia had left class, and the hallways had filled with their usual flow of students, hurrying to get to their next class. Lydia shook her head. “ _No_ , I mean like a crowd, outside—people yelling, cheering.”

“I—don't hear anything out of the ordinary.”

Kira looked sorry not to have a better answer for Lydia, but Lydia shook her head again and said, “It's okay, don't worry about it,” effectively dismissing Kira. Obviously no one else but her could hear that noise, and Lydia knew what it meant when she could hear things others couldn't: it meant danger, imminent death. She didn't feel any pull to go anywhere, so there probably wasn't a dead body to find, not yet, but something was going on. And she was determined to find out what it was. 

\---

It was probably all his fault. This was Stiles' first lucid thought, and it stuck with him for a long time after that. He was thrown into a dark room and fell on his elbow, the shock reverberating painfully through his arm. The curse he let out was enough to send Scott berserk.

“Don't touch him!” Scott roared, and the decidedly inhuman growl that followed froze Stiles' insides into a ball of dread.

He tried to get back up, but it was hard to find his balance with his hands bound behind his back. He rolled on his side and struggled to hoist himself up on his knees.

“Scott? I'm okay, buddy. See—”

But it was too late—Scott's eyes were glowing red and his fangs were showing. He moved as if to launch himself at the person standing between him and Stiles, but a shot resounded and Scott crumpled to the floor with a pitiful groan.

“Scott!” Allison cried out, and she dropped to Scott's side, tugging at the binds tying her hands behind her back. Stiles crawled up on his knees to join them.

The person who had shot—a middle-aged woman with blond hair cropped short and a face sharp like the blade of a knife—nonchalantly raised the weapon she'd just fired.

“This one is loaded with ordinary bullets,” she said. She had a surprisingly deep and yet melodious voice. “This one, though—” She pointed at the rifle tucked under her arm. “This one's bullets have a little something added to them to give some spice. Wolfsbane, if you catch my drift.”

Stiles gasped at the word, and the woman smiled. “Yes, we know about werewolves. All of my men have similar weapons. So tell your friend not to feel too invincible, even if he seems to be an Alpha.” 

She looked down on Scott, rolled into a ball on the floor and shaking. The only source of light came from the hallway so the woman's face was half-bathed in shadows, but Stiles interpreted her look as confusion—she was surprised by Scott, probably not expecting someone so young to be an Alpha. She was definitely not disconcerted at the whole werewolf situation, and that raised a new line of questioning.

“He's _your_ Alpha, I guess. Which means you'll take this seriously: we're prepared for your kind,” the woman continued with more assurance. “Consider this shot a warning.”

Allison was making soothing noises at Scott, hunched over him as if to shield even though she couldn't touch him. Stiles' head ached, probably from having been tasered earlier, but it didn't keep him from puzzling over the woman's words: they thought that Allison and he were werewolves too. Had they been specifically going after werewolves? Were they hunters? Would it help or hurt Allison and Stiles' position to point out the mistake? Stiles finally decided on keeping silent for the moment. There was little chance that they would be let go—not that Stiles would be willing to go if it meant leaving Scott behind—and more that they would simply be executed. Whatever was wanted from them, it was probably better to just play along for the moment.

“What do you want from us?” he asked instead.

The woman smiled again, and it looked _nasty_. “We didn't exactly plan for you—I'm sorry to tell you that you were victims of the wrong time, wrong place—but don't worry, we'll find a use for you.”

The door was closed behind them and they were left alone inside. There was a narrow opening cut out at the top of the door, so a little light came in and let Stiles see that the room was small and probably empty. Scott sat up, Allison hovering by his side. 

“I'm okay,” he said, and Stiles heard more than he saw his smile. “Already healed.”

“They didn't even hurt me, not really,” Stiles said. It came out a little snappier than he had intended, but Scott didn't seem to take it the wrong way.

“I know. I was just, I was barely conscious, running high on wolfy instincts, and that sound—you in pain—I couldn't stand it. I guess I reacted more than acted.”

A small bundle of warmth spread inside Stiles' chest at the words, but he coughed and turned again to the door. There was no handle on their side, so it had definitely been designed to hold prisoners. Stiles' hands were still bound so he used his foot to test it, giving it a kick. “Steel-reinforced,” he declared.

“They said they didn't plan for us, but they were clearly expecting prisoners,” Allison said, echoing Stiles' own thoughts.

“That person we saw running in the woods, maybe?” Scott said.

“Probably. And that woman's definitely a hunter.”

Stiles whipped around to face Allison, his interest piqued. “Yeah, that's what I thought too—she obviously knows about werewolves, at least—but how can you tell for sure?”

“Well, she knows more than just the simple fact that werewolves exist: she knows how to hurt them, and she knows the jargon—she could tell Scott was an Alpha. They had tasers, which, granted, aren't unique to hunters, but that's another point. There's also something about the way she talks and holds herself that makes me think of my dad, and... all the other hunters I've met.”

Keeping a shoulder against the wall, Stiles started to follow it to make out the exact size of the cell, and see if there were any more openings.

“They were armed to capture,” he said thoughtfully. “Even though that woman said they weren't trying to capture _us_. Think your dad might know her?”

“I have no idea,” Allison said. “My dad still keeps away from the hunter community, even now that he isn't retired anymore.”

Stiles snorted. “If he ever was. But even if you don't know her, there's a possibility she might know about _you_ , right? The Argent clan's heir.”

“If she does, then it doesn't look like she recognized me. She thought we were all werewolves.”

“She saw that we were _pack_ ,” Scott said. “And she just assumed the rest.”

Stiles had finished his tour of their cell, and it had been depressingly short: the room couldn't have measured more than 20 square feet, cement walls and floor, and he hadn't felt any window. 

“Which shows how much she knows,” he said, sitting down—or rather, _dropping_ down—next to Scott and Allison. His shoulders were cramping from the enforced position and he rolled them one after the other for some relief. He longed to be able to massage his aching head, but it wasn't an option for the moment.

They sat in a circle and no one talked for a moment. With nothing left to distract him, the silence made it hard for Stiles to resist the pull of his dark thoughts. This was all his fault—the idea came back with a vengeance, like a punch in the gut. He'd dragged Scott and Allison in the preserve to search again for Malia Tate, and that was when they'd stumbled onto a bunch of armed people chasing a slim figure skittering between the trees. The whole endeavor had been stupid. Finding out what had happened to Malia eight years ago had been his dad's obsession at first. Then they'd figured out that the girl had turned into a _coyote_ and they had to stop her father from killing his own daughter out of ignorance, so of course it was important, but when had wandering around in the woods ever done them any favors? If he'd just gone by himself, then—

Scott nudged him with a shoulder, interrupting the vicious circle of his thoughts. “It's not your fault. We followed you into the woods. It wasn't even the first time, and we generally don't get kidnapped.”

“Well, I seem to remember that one time it got you bitten by a crazy Alpha werewolf.”

“Turned out okay, though.”

“I wonder at your definition of 'okay'.”

“Let's try to sleep,” Allison said, and Stiles was grateful for the change of subject.

“Yeah,” he said. “Sleep sounds good.”

The floor was bare and the temperature in the cell, albeit not downright cold, was not comfortable enough for them to sleep well without any sort of bedcover.

“We should—” Scott squirmed, obviously just as uncomfortable as Stiles was with the way his arms were bound. His pants were wet with blood and the sight and smell of it made Stiles queasy. “We should sleep close to each other. To keep warm.” 

They lay down on the cold hard floor, slotted together back to front like Legos, with Scott occupying the middle position. Scott's body warmed Stiles' back, which left his front feeling all the more vulnerable, but he tried not to let that keep him from falling asleep. He also tried to ignore the temperature, the hard floor, the awkward position—his shoulders were aching fiercely now and the binds cut into his wrists; his idle hands brushed at some point against a really inappropriate part of Scott's anatomy—and the terrifying uncertainty of their situation. There was a hollow feeling at the center of his chest—it was a familiar one, had been there since the ritual with the Nemeton, but it felt worse right now, like the darkness was feeding on the situation. Eventually, though, exhaustion got the best of him and he fell into an uneasy slumber. 

\---

They were woken up the next morning by the woman hunter and a bunch of her goons, and relieved from their binds. The ache in Scott's shoulders and wrists quickly vanished as though it had never been there, but, watching his friends grimace and rub at their bruised wrists, he felt a churn of shame at how unfair it was that he could get over it in the blink of an eye and they couldn't. Of course, he thought to himself as he felt the stiff material of his blood-soaked jeans chafe against his thigh, his healing abilities came with a price. But if he could use it to divert harm from Stiles and Allison, then it was more than worth the discomfort.

“What are you gonna do with us?” he asked defiantly before Stiles could do it.

The woman gave him an assessing look. “You're very young for an Alpha. You got us curious. You three were an unexpected catch, so we're just going to try and see if you're worth the trouble. If you're not, you're dead.” She smiled broadly and Scott saw that one of her front teeth was chipped. “My name's Annie Miller, by the way.”

Scott caught Stiles' grim look and felt his stomach drop: he knew enough to understand that her giving them her name and not trying to hide her face was a very bad sign. It meant she didn't expect them to ever be able to pass the information.

She looked at them expectantly, like she wanted them to introduce themselves in return. When none of them spoke she merely shrugged. “I'll just find out by myself, then.”

They were pushed out of the room and chained at the wrists and ankles like inmates in a prison show. Scott's chains felt particularly uncomfortable, irritating the skin on his wrists in a way that didn't feel natural, almost like a burn. Miller caught him wincing and gave him a wink. “We mixed a bit of silver in it. Like it? We haven't had any customer feedback yet.”

Scott looked back at her with a blank stare and she chuckled softly, shaking her head as though she found him silly. They were led through a long, impersonal corridor, with a concrete floor and walls painted white. Allison and Stiles both moved stiffly, stumbling a couple of times and being manhandled back to their feet by the armed men. Scott could feel cold apprehension swirl in his gut, growing with each step he took. He tried making himself demand to know where they were taken, but the words froze in his throat. He didn't really want to know—he wanted to keep walking down the hallway and never get to their destination, because it couldn't be anywhere pleasant.

But Stiles, of course, had never been able to remain silent once in his whole life. “Where are you taking us?” he asked. “You're not going to kill us right away, so it means that you want us to do something, or do something to us. What is it? Medical experimentation? Sex slave trade? Or— _ow!_ “

One of the men had used the butt of his rifle to hit Stiles in the face, and Scott registered the burn in his wrists from the chains before he even realized he had lurched forward. He heard chains jiggle and saw another of the men restraining Allison. Her eyes were dark and wide, and when she looked at him Scott felt a violent urge to _do something_ to help her and Stiles that clashed against his blatant impotency.

“I'm fine, Scott, I'm okay,” Stiles said, his voice choke-full of pain. Both of his hands covered the hurt side of his face like he was trying to hold his head together. “Don't—don't do anything.”

Miller hadn't made a move, letting her men handle the commotion, but she was looking at the three of them thoughtfully. “You're not werewolves,” she said in Allison and Stiles' direction, not making it sound like a question. “But you're an Alpha,” she said to Scott. “ _Their_ Alpha, that much is obvious. Interesting.”

One of the men, a bulky, beardy mountain of a guy that looked like he could snap any of them on his knee, approached Miller and asked her in a lower voice: “Should we cancel—”

“No.” Miller smiled that sweet, bright smile of hers that Scott was starting to hate. “Certainly not. A teenage Alpha and his human pack mates. That ought to be fun. I'm very curious to see if they can hold their own against our little Tracy.”

 _Against?_ Scott met Stiles' eyes, or at least the one eye that wasn't covered by Stiles' fingers. Were they going to fight? Who was Tracy?

He had his answer a lot quicker than he'd have liked. As they walked further Scott started to distinguish noises, something like the excited babble of a crowd waiting for a show, and his stomach clenched at the picture that those sounds were starting to paint in his mind.

“Fuck,” he heard Stiles murmur, and knew that his friends could probably now hear it too. “Those bastards. This can't be for _real_.”

They finally got into a wide room full of people. Only the middle of it was properly lit up, showing off a square space enclosed by wire fences. The audience was kept to the sides of the room by metallic safety barriers, that had also been used to clear a path up to the cage. As they walked that path Scott could feel the crowd's curiosity and excitement press up against him on both sides, making his skin crawl. A flight of steps, and they were unchained and shoved into the cage through one of the corner openings. The delimited space was wider than Scott was used to from watching cage fighting on TV, but the purpose for the whole setting was still clear. The light in the cage came from spotlights placed at ground level on each corner of the cage, and their white, unrelenting luminosity quickly started to give him a headache.

“You know,” Stiles whispered, leaning towards him, “this would almost be kind of cool if it wasn't so deeply fucked up. Like, _dude_.”

Scott was way too used to Stiles blurting all sorts of inappropriate things to be fazed by that statement, but Allison shot Stiles an incredulous look from Scott's other side. Another corner of the cage was opened and someone joined them inside: at first glance it looked like a thin, dark-haired girl about their age, but something about her face struck Scott as strange—oh, fangs, she must be a werewolf, which made sense since Miller had thought the three of them were too, but there was also something trailing behind her, like a shadow, or—

“Holy _shit_!” Stiles exclaimed as a long, lizard-like tail whipped from behind the girl and snapped in the air. The crowd cheered and clapped as though it was some kind of cue. 

“Ladies and gentlemen!” a voice boomed from somewhere above them. It was probably unsurprising that the person talking wasn't joining them inside the cage. “Welcome tonight for another thrilling, bloody death match. Three newcomers against our spitfire Lizard Girl! Who will come on top?”

“What the hell is this?” Stiles whispered frantically. 

A bell rang. “I don't know, I— Get _down_!”

The end of the tail flew in their direction and they ducked on instinct. Scott had never seen any creature like that girl before, and yet something about her was familiar, nagging at the back of his mind—

“Kanima!” Stiles exclaimed. “We need to watch for the tail!”

“Like Jackson?” Allison said, but didn't have the time to elaborate because she had to dodge the tail once more.

They backed down from the tail's assault until they were almost against one of the fences and had nowhere else to go. The crowd booed, and the girl—Tracy?—growled and her eyes flashed gold. This was the only warning Scott got before she threw herself at him.

“Scott!”

Scott and the girl rolled on the ground under the crowd's excited cries. Scott could feel the girl's claws dig into his shoulders. Her face was a couple of inches from his and he was taken aback by the glint of madness in her golden eyes. She snapped her fangs at him, like she wanted to take a bite out of his nose, and he frantically tried to push her away. She was unnaturally strong for her size, resisting all his attempts to buck her off him, powered by a rage that had her in a frenzy to get to him, like he'd killed her whole family and she finally had her hands on him.

He managed to grasp her wrists and tried to wrestle her arms away from him, her claws dripping with his blood, and she was so focused on him that she didn't see the boot coming for her head. Allison kicked the girl hard enough that she jerked back with a surprised sound of pain. Scott scrambled away from her and jumped to his feet. Stiles and Allison stood at his back, and Stiles murmured to him, “I don't think she can properly direct her tail at something that's behind her. We need to surround her, divide her attention. Wait for my signal.”

The girl was picking herself up already, wavering a little like she was dizzy, but as soon as they tried to get close to her her tail soared into the air, forcing them to step back. Following Stiles' directions they split up to circle her, poking in turns at the safe space she created around herself with her flying tail. More than once they narrowly missed being struck by the tip of the tail, and Scott wasn't sure what would happen if they were, if they would be paralyzed like with Jackson, but she was definitely using it like a weapon so it was instinct to avoid it. She was also slashing the air with her clawed hands, her movements becoming jerky and furious. They were getting to her, but although her increasing frustration meant she was becoming more predictable in her attacks, she didn't seem to tire, while Scott could see that Allison and Stiles were getting weary, moving more slowly, their reflexes losing a fraction of their sharpness.

The crowd seemed to be getting bored with all that dancing around, because some booing had joined the cheering and the shouted suggestions of ' _claw them open!_ ' and ' _bash her head in!_ '. The girl crouched to the ground, hands resting in the space between her legs, and Scott was struck once again by how animalistic she behaved—what _was_ she? Had she always been this way? Had something been done to her? Then she used her position to spring in the air, aiming at Scott, and was only stopped in her momentum by a shoe hitting the back of her head.

It's was Stiles' shoe—she growled and whirled around to face him, and that was when Stiles shouted, “Scott, _now_!” The end of the girl's tail followed her movement a fraction second later and whipped back to hit him in the neck. Stiles fell face first to the ground, and Scott launched himself forward, a growl of his own rumbling in his chest, and held the girl down while grabbing the end of her tail as it reeled back to her. She tried to fight him off, squirming under his weight, but the sight of Stiles falling had fired him and for the first time in the fight he wasn't just defending himself but wanted to keep her down, to _crush_ her before she tried to hurt them again.

“I'm okay!” he heard Stiles' slightly muffled voice say, and he felt something in his chest loosen. He risked a glance up and saw Allison kneeling by Stiles' side, a hand on the back of his neck. 

“Just like Jackson!” she said, and Scott relaxed even further. Stiles was only paralyzed—it wasn't fun, but he'd been through it before. It would eventually wear off, and he'd be just fine.

Only, now that anger and protectiveness weren't burning in Scott's chest as strongly, he wasn't sure what to do with the girl he held firmly secured under him. She was still struggling, kicking up her feet and clawing at whatever part of his body she could reach, creating short little bursts of on and off pain. He wasn't going to be able to keep her down indefinitely—but then Allison came along and kicked the girl in the head a few times until she was half-unconscious, and he had a short respite. 

He looked up at Allison, disheveled and breathless, her face red from exertion.

“What do you think we—”

“Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!” That was the crowd, elation mounting with each cry.

 _A death match_ , the man had said at the beginning. They expected him to kill that girl. She was already weakly stirring with a low moan, and she looked so vulnerable like this, just like a normal girl with slightly prominent teeth. Someone entered the cage, and Scott recognized him as one of the men that had led them here. He was holding a rifle and told Scott, “What are you waiting for?”

As in a dream, Scott brought his hands to the girl's neck, watching them shake. What the hell was he doing? Sure, she had attacked them, but it was likely she didn't have a choice in the matter. She had probably been doing this for a while. And she was defenseless right now, wasn't fighting back anymore—this would make him a _murderer_.

The man with the rifle sighed, looking put upon, and fired his weapon. Pain erupted in Scott's thigh and he fell back from the girl with a groan. His ears were ringing, but he heard Allison and Stiles both cry out his name, and the man who'd shot him say, “If one of you don't kill her, the next bullet will be a wolfsbane one.”

Scott grunted in pain, pressing his hand to the wound. It was just instinct by that point, because the wound would be healed in a few minutes anyway. He thought the bullet might have broken a bone, though, because the pain was greater than the day before, radiating through his whole leg, and he didn't think there was any exit wound. What would become of the bullet once he'd healed? He'd been shot before, but he couldn't remember the details. Would it just dissolve inside his body? The thought made him faintly sick.

“Scott?” Stiles called. “Scott, are you okay? Talk to me!”

_Kill, kill, kill, kill._

The crowd was relentless, and the man with the gun was getting impatient. Allison pressed a boot against the girl's throat, just as she was starting to blink, and pressed all her weight down.

“Allison, no—!”

Scott hadn't been able to help his cry, even though it was useless, even though he knew Allison had no choice. He _heard_ the girl's windpipe crush, heard her gurgle through her last living moments. Stiles' head was turned the wrong way and he was asking in a panicked voice, “Scott? Scott? Allison? What's going on? _Shit_.”

Allison retained her position for a long time, looking pale but determined. Scott listened for the girl's heartbeat and heard it slow down until there was nothing more to hear. Then it was over.

“We're alive,” Allison said, probably for Stiles' benefit. “Scott and I are both alive.”

Scott felt dazed, like he'd taken a blow to the head on top of a bullet to the leg. This was all a dream, _had_ to be a dream.

The man who'd shot him said, “Don't feel too bad for Tracy. She didn't have more than a few fights in her anyway.” He gave Scott a toothy grin. “Welcome aboard.”

\---

They had to carry Stiles out of the cage, and they chained Allison and Scott again before they dragged them out. Nothing of her surroundings registered much to Allison as she kept her eyes leveled at the floor, watching rows of impersonal white tiles unravel, dirtied by all the feet that had walked on them before. Their guards were nothing more than pairs of scruffy combat boots to her. 

They were pushed into a room and the chains were taken off Allison's wrists. On the far back wall of the room a line of showerheads were fixed and there were drains on the tiled floor, but no stalls. One of the guards said, “Take off your clothes. We'll give you new ones after your shower.”

“What about my friend?” Scott said. Allison looked to see that Stiles had been dropped on the floor like a sack of potatoes, and that Scott was gathering him in his arms.

“If you don't help him, we will,” the guard said. 

He'd talked in an unconcerned tone like it was all the same to him, but then kicked Stiles in the hip to punctuate his statement. Scott let a growl slip, but the guard gave a little shake to his gun and cocked an eyebrow at Scott.

“We'll help him,” Allison hurried to say. Her voice was oddly rough and she didn't recognize the way she sounded. 

Allison and Scott teamed up to get Stiles out of his dirty jeans, sweatshirt, and t-shirt, while he tightened his jaws and tried not to look them in the eye. It was uneasy work, because Stiles couldn't help them by lifting up his arms or legs or butt, and they had to manhandle him like a wax doll, tugging the clothes off his insensitive limbs. When he was down to his socks and underwear, Allison glanced in direction of the two guards still inside the room.

“What are you waiting for?” said the taller of the two, the one who had kicked Stiles. “It's not like we've never seen a dick before,” he added snidely, which made his partner snicker. 

Allison exchanged a look with Scott, who looked furious but still nodded, and they silently finished getting Stiles naked. His cheekbone was red and swollen from the hit he'd taken before the fight, some dried blood flaking where the skin had split open. Allison was trying not to look at his naked body, giving him as much privacy as the circumstances allowed, but it was difficult to undress him and not see anything, and she couldn't help but be surprised to notice that he was a bit more toned than she'd have thought. Not to Scott or Isaac or Derek's level, but still nothing to be ashamed of. He caught one of her looks and blushed, so she kept her eyes firmly on a crack in one of the tiles afterward. 

Then it was Allison's and Scott's turns to undress and the guards were still in the room. They were ostensibly half-turned as if to give them privacy, but Allison caught one of them leering in her direction. Cheeks flushed with humiliation and impotent anger she faced the wall, pretending they weren't there. She took off her shoes first and threw them away with a shudder of disgust: their soles were bloody, probably from Scott's blood, and she'd left a pathway of reddish stains all the way up to here. As she took off the rest of her clothes, her back stiff and her teeth clenched, she thought she could still feel the guards' eyes linger on the length of her body, leaving slimy trails on her skin like a pair of fat slugs.

Allison and Scott had to haul Stiles up, and the three of them huddled under the same showerhead. The water was cold and in no time they were shivering and chattering their teeth, Allison and Scott scrubbing themselves and Stiles vigorously until their skin was pink from it. The blood from Scott’s recently healed wound swirled down the drain with the water, and Allison had to breathe through her nose to fight off nausea. Twice now Scott had been shot to make a point; they were going to keep pumping him full of bullets until he—Allison bit the inside of her cheek, using the pain to center herself and keep her thoughts from straying.

They made a quick job of washing up, none of them wanting to linger through what was probably the most uncomfortable shower in their existences. They were naked, wet, and pressed tightly together as Allison and Scott supported Stiles' weight, keeping him from slipping and cracking his skull on the tiles, but it wasn't sexy at all. It was miserably cold and awkward, and the way the guards kept shooting them jeering glances made the whole thing feel dirty. 

Once they were done they were given worn but clean underwear, pants, and long-sleeved shirts, as well as socks and sneakers. They were sent back to their cell—or maybe a new one, but built on a similar 20 square feet cement box model. They spooned together as they had the night before, this time with Allison in the middle. Scott wrapped around her like a blanket, and Stiles had regained enough movement to be able to weakly fold into a fetal position.

Allison fell asleep pretty quickly, too exhausted to consider the repercussions of what the day had brought. It felt like no time had passed at all when a nightmare startled her awake: she could still hear the crunch of the creature's throat under her heel, could still see its—her?—dead eyes staring at nothing. She shivered, keeping her eyes shut, and felt the arm coiled around her waist tighten its grip.

“Are you cold?” Scott murmured into her ear.

She nodded, and it wasn't a total lie. Scott was warm at her back, but by contrast she felt even colder on her front, where Stiles had been curled against her but was now missing. She sat up and Scott followed suit, keeping an arm around her. She turned her back on him and gently picked up his arm to get it off her, mourning the loss of his body heat but also the comfort that his touch had brought. All the defenses she'd tried to build against him since their breakup had crumbled, and she wanted nothing more than to be back in his arms and cling to him for dear life. She managed to keep herself from asking for it out loud, though.

Stiles was up and pacing the length of their cell, muttering to himself like a madman. The bruising on his face had turned a violent purple, black under his eye. When he saw they were awake, he exclaimed, “Finally!”

Allison felt a shot of irritation flare up at that comment: if sleep was the only comfort they had left, what was wrong with indulging in it? It wasn't like they had to be up for school or anything important.

“How long have you been up?” Scott asked. He looked wary for some reason, like he was recognizing the precursory signs of some impending disaster. 

“I don't know. An hour, maybe? Hard to track time without—Wonder what they did with my watch. It was a birthday present from my grandma. She's always nagging me about losing my stuff, but this time you'll agree that it is definitely _not_ my fault—”

“Maybe you can try to ask for it back.”

“Yeah, right, sure.” Stiles briefly interrupted his pacing to give Scott a wry look, and then started up again.

Watching Stiles all keyed up made Allison feel incredibly weary, so she tried to doze off again. Unfortunately, Stiles seemed to have now become incapable of pacing in silence. He was holding a long uninterrupted monologue of trivial comments mixed with more serious concerns about their situation. Sometimes Scott chimed in and they discussed for a little while, but mostly Stiles didn't seem to need the input to keep talking.

When it was obvious that she wouldn't be getting any more sleep, Allison got up and walked a few steps to stretch her legs. There wasn't really enough room for more before she and Stiles were in danger of walking into each other, and she tried to ignore the claustrophobic feeling it triggered.

“What do you think was that thing, anyway?” Stiles asked, rubbing his forehead with an insistence that suggested a headache. Well, he was giving _Allison_ a headache too, so she wasn't very inclined to sympathy. “Like, the tail and the paralytic poison pointed to a kanima, but it wasn't all lizard-like like Jackson was, and the fangs—”

Allison gritted her teeth. _I'm going to kill him_ was on the tip of her tongue, but the comment never passed her lips: killing was something she did now, wasn’t it? She couldn't just keep making that kind of comment idly, like she was still the same person she had been only a few days before. 

“Stiles,” Scott said mildly. “Shut up.”

“What? Oh. Fuck, Allison—”

Allison refused to look at Stiles—she didn't want to deal with his pity, or his disgust, or his understanding. She wished he would just change the subject and start rambling again about something else, but of course Stiles wasn't one to let anything go. 

“Allison, I'm so sorry. I'm a jerk, I shouldn't have—”

“Oh my god, Stiles, please, please, just _shut your mouth_. Can't you just, I don't know, just sit in a corner and not _talk_ for a few minutes? I swear, you're going to drive me insane, and—”

“Allison. Allison, hey.”

Scott came up to her and put a hand on her shoulder, holding onto her in a firm, but not restraining way, and Allison could feel from his hand all the strength he kept in check. She felt a hot rush of anger surge up in her chest: did he think she was unhinged, was that how he saw her now? And why was he trying to calm her, but had let Stiles rave for what felt like _hours_? She could feel that dark spot buried deep behind her ribs, the one that Deaton had warned them about, pulsate like a second heart—it made her want to lash out, scratch and bite until someone else bled.

“I'm not a spooked horse, Scott,” she snapped at him, batting his hand away. “I'm just tired, okay, I'm tired and he's getting on my nerves!”

“Yeah, I know, believe me, I know.” Scott was talking in that soothing low voice he used on animals at Deaton's. Allison had the almost uncontrollable urge to scream, but it would definitely make her look deranged so she bit her tongue to contain it. “I know you're just on edge right now, and I know that Stiles can get—a bit much. But he's not trying to be annoying, I promise you.”

“I have ADHD,” Stiles said with a shrug. “And I've been off my meds for over 48 hours now, so if you think I've been annoying then brace yourself, it's about to get a lot worse.”

He'd said it flippantly but with a hint of tension, and for the first time Allison noticed real distress under his agitation.

“Oh.” She crossed her arms and let out a soft breath, feeling her anger and annoyance deflate. “Now _I_ feel like a jerk.”

“Don't. I know it's—Scott knew me before I was diagnosed, he can tell you horror stories about it.” Scott mock-shuddered, and it put the ghost of a smile on Stiles' face. “Sometimes it got too much even for my parents, and they loved me.”

“I just—neither of you ever said anything about it.”

Scott and Stiles shared a look. “I guess it's just one of those things, you know?” Stiles said. “A fact of life, like, the sky's blue, Lydia's smart, Finstock loves lacrosse, I have ADHD. Not much to talk about.”

Looking back, it did explain a lot about things that Allison had always chalked up to Stiles being Stiles, and she felt like an idiot for not having figured it out sooner. The awkward silence stretched for a moment until Stiles, who had kept more or less still while they were talking, started fidgeting again like he couldn't help himself. He cursed, looking beyond frustrated. He was wringing his hands, as if trying to keep them from flying off.

“How long do you think they're going to keep us locked up here, huh? Hours? _Days_?”

He didn't let Allison or Scott answer this and banged his head against the wall. Not hard enough to hurt himself, but the _thump_ still made Allison wince.

“Oh my god,” he moaned. “I'm gonna die.”

“You're not going to _die_ ,” Scott said.

“I'm gonna go crazy and drag you down with me.”

Scott, whose eyebrows were aggressively trying to fuse with one another, went to Stiles and dropped an arm around him. “Hey,” he said softly, rubbing circles into his friend's shoulder. “You're gonna be okay.”

Stiles snorted in disbelief, but still leaned into the touch. Allison looked at the two of them, biting her lips.

“What do you need?” she asked.

Stiles turned to look at her. “What?”

“We're locked in here for the time being—we have no way to know when they'll let us out again, or—” Allison swallowed against the feeling that something pointy was stuck in her throat. “How can Scott and I help you cope? I don't know much about ADHD. Do you need something to keep you busy? Is that it?”

“Uh, yeah, preferably some kind of physical activity? Like, I don't think I could read right now even if we had the material.”

“Okay.” Allison tapped her lips with a finger, thinking. An idea was starting to form in her mind, and it might even be good for all of them. “There are a number of exercises that are a part of my workout routine since I started training with my dad. Obviously we can't go jogging and we don't have any equipment, but we can do pushups, and abdominal crunches, and stuff. It will keep all of us busy, _and_ keep us fit for—whatever comes next. What do you think?”

Stiles looked at her with wonder, like he couldn't believe she'd come up with a solution that his fevered mind had missed, and Scott was dazzling her with an approving smile. Allison couldn't help feeling a warm flush of accomplishment at their reactions. 

“Yeah, I think that'd be great,” Stiles said. “Thank you, Allison, you're the best.”

Allison gave him her sweetest smile. “Don't thank me yet. I'm going to work the two of you to the ground. In two hours, you will be begging for mercy.”


	2. Chapter 2

Deaton didn't look surprised to see her when Lydia showed up at the clinic that evening, but then he was a master at hiding his emotions, so it didn't mean much. 

“Lydia,” he said, peeling rubber gloves off his hands with a snap. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I've been hearing things.” She raised her eyebrows pointedly, giving him time to let that sink in.

“Okay.” He sat down by the examination table, and drew another chair for Lydia. “Please, have a seat. So those _things_ you heard, I imagine no one else can hear them too?”

“You think right.”

“But you haven't found any dead bodies, I presume, or you would be talking with the police rather than with me. Tell me about what you heard.”

Lydia described the crowd noises that she'd heard, and as she recounted her experience she felt frustrated at how useless it all was. It could have been anything, really, and she wanted it to be related to her friends, but she was afraid it was only wishful thinking.

Deaton remained silent for a moment after she'd stopped talking. The dim light inside the room made his expression difficult to discern. “Why did you come to me?” he finally asked.

“Jennifer said I was a banshee—I want to know more about what it involves. I want to understand my powers, and to learn how to control them rather than... let them lead me around by the nose until I stumble on a dead body. If I can help find Allison and the boys...”

Deaton frowned. “What makes you think this is related to their disappearance?”

“It's just—a feeling that I have.” 

Lydia pinched her lips, trying not to show how lost and confused she felt. She would have given anything at that moment for uncomplicated claws and fangs, instead of those nebulous abilities that made her feel like she'd lost her mind. 

“But you're not sure that 'feeling' doesn't come from you wanting it to be about them.”

Lydia narrowed her eyes at Deaton's perceptiveness. “Yes,” she said shortly. “Or rather no, I'm not sure. If it's related to them, then it must mean that—that they're dying, or in danger of dying, right?”

“Mmm.” Deaton rose to his feet, and turned his back to Lydia to look through the content of a drawer. “What you need to understand is that banshees are quite a rare occurrence, and that I haven't met any of your kind before.”

“Yes, yes, stop it with the disclaimers,” Lydia snapped. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”

Deaton shut the drawer with an almost inaudible sigh, obviously not having found what he was looking for.

“This is just a theory, but I see a possible reason why you would have a sort of—how to put it—a connection, maybe, to your friends.”

“Well, what is it?”

He turned back to her, crossing his arms over his chest. “The ritual, the one they did to awaken the Nemeton's power—for a moment there, they were dead. Even if they were revived, this is the sort of thing that leaves a trace.”

“And I can feel death,” Lydia murmured, catching onto what he meant. “Are you saying—is it possible that I could actually use that connection to find them?”

“I'm saying this is a remote possibility,” Deaton said in an overly cautious tone that made Lydia want to scream. “Maybe what you heard has no relation to Scott, Allison, and Stiles. Maybe it does but we won't be able to decipher it. In any case, I'm sure you will agree that this is worth a try, although I would caution you to expect a lot of frustration and disappointment.”

Frustration and disappointment didn't sound any worse than a mere inconvenience after the past week. “I can deal with that. I'd rather try than do nothing at all. But—I'm not sure how we can use what I heard: is it something that one of them was hearing at that moment? If so, then it's odd. How could they be in a crowd after having been kidnapped?” 

“You compared the way the crowd sounded to people at a concert.”

“Yes, it was—it wasn't like hearing the rumble of people buzzing around at the mall. They were cheering at something. The only word I could hear clearly was 'kill.' Like in a gladiators' fight. Do you think—”

“People using werewolves in death matches isn't unheard of.”

Lydia's fists clutched at the fabric of her dress. “What about Stiles and Allison, then?”

“People using _people_ in that sort of fights—slaves, for example—is also something that has happened in the past.”

Did it mean that Stiles and Allison were being forced to fight werewolves, or worse? Allison had been trained to face supernatural creatures, but she needed to be properly armed to be at her most effective, and Stiles—Lydia shut that train of thought with determination. Scott wouldn't let anything happen to Stiles, or to Allison for that matter. He would protect them with everything he had. What _she_ needed to do, was to focus on how she could help them, rather than flounder at the thought of what could be happening to them.

“What can I do? Even if we're right about this, it doesn't tell us where they _are_.”

“I think that the problem you have is that your rational mind is hindering the natural process of your abilities.”

“What do you mean?”

“You're a very intelligent girl, Lydia.” She jerked a nod, wanting him to forego flattery and get to the point. “But in this case, your intelligence is working against you. There are things we can try to direct your powers in a more constructive way: meditation, certain rituals and drugs to open your awareness. Not all of them will be pleasant.”

Lydia leveled him with her fiercest look. “I'm ready for anything.”

His lips formed the faintest of smiles. “I certainly hope you are.”

 _Well_ , a voice in her head that sounded a bit like Stiles said, _that didn't sound foreboding_ at all. 

\---

A couple of weeks passed, and they settled into a horrifying routine. They fought every couple of days, and each time their opponents were weird hybrids of some kinds of shifters with other creatures that Scott generally didn't recognize. Allison and Stiles, having poured over the Argent bestiary, could more often than not offer a good guess: wendigo, basilisk, harpy. They were all teenagers, too, all kids their age, and although they were more resistant than humans, they didn't have Scott's almost instantaneous healing abilities. They always looked human enough that Scott couldn't ignore it.

They were lucky enough that the three of them were always fighting a single opponent, probably because Allison and Stiles were two unarmed humans, and that evened the odds, or maybe because Miller knew that they were pack, and figured that separating them would make them less efficient. They managed to win all of their fights through a refinement of Stiles' bait and switch tactic, and Scott using himself as a werewolf shield to protect his friends, getting himself clawed, bitten, stung, and scratched, and getting through the pain by thinking how much more terrible it would be if Allison and Stiles were in his place. When it came to the killing, though, he could never bring himself to do it, but Stiles and Allison never gave the guards the time to shoot him again as a motivation. In their second fight, Stiles was the one who did it, bashing their opponent's head repeatedly against the ground. It was a gruesome death, and the following day Stiles didn't speak a word until mid-afternoon. When he came out of his self-imposed silence, he acted as though nothing had been wrong at all. For their third and fourth fights, Allison and Stiles teamed up with frightening efficiency.

When they didn't fight, they were left alone in their cell and spent their time trying to help Stiles cope with the inactivity. They were fed once a day, generally bland rice, with a fruit every other day and sometimes a bit of beef jerky, and taken separately to the bathroom twice a day. They were only allowed to shower after a fight. With the rest of the hours left on their hands they exercised under Allison's strict tutelage, and discussed abundantly the nature of the people they fought in the cage.

The mystery had the merit of capturing Stiles' attention. He called them _chimeras_ , and claimed they were probably the result of scientific meddling.

“Everything I've read on the supernatural seems to support the idea that they shouldn't be able to exist,” he insisted. “They all have a mix of characteristics from different species that never meet in one individual. Therefore, it _had_ to be caused artificially. I wish Lydia was here,” he added with a sigh, then realized what he'd said and grimaced. “I mean, no, I don't wish she was _here_ with us, because that would suck and I'd much rather she's safe at home, but I wish, you know, that I could pick her brain to better understand this.”

“Do you think, maybe, that they were—humans, once?” Scott asked, even though the idea horrified him so much he didn't really want an answer. But it was like poking at an open wound, he couldn't leave it alone.

“I don't know,” Stiles said, and Scott knew him too well not to see that he probably had a definite opinion on the subject, but thought Scott couldn't handle it.

“That's sick,” Allison said. “Do you think they've been kidnapped, like us?”

 _Maybe_ , had been Stiles' answer. Scott was jostled from the memory by a cry of surprise and pain. He blinked, trying to clear his mind. They were fighting, yes, that was what they were doing, fighting a guy who looked enough like a werewolf that it was how Scott had dubbed him in his mind, even though he had some weird talon-like things on his hands. He was strong and fast, and had tossed Scott and Allison around. Scott didn't think he'd lost consciousness, but his thoughts were a little jumbled.

 _Allison!_ Relief bloomed in his chest when he saw her a little ahead of him, getting back to her feet—she looked unhurt, absently brushing up her clothes even though the floor wasn't dusty or dirty. Scott saw alarm dawn on her face, eyes and mouth open wide, and he felt his heart constrict. He'd heard a scream—it hadn't been Allison's. Scott followed her look and saw with horror that the werewolf they were fighting was straddling Stiles' chest, one hand around his throat and the other one raised over Stiles' head, his face twisted with a grimace of anticipated triumph. Stiles squeezed his eyes shut, and Scott felt the wild, animal part of him that he always kept in check let loose, roaring in fury.

“ _No!_ “

Everything around him had become blurry and muted. The edges of his vision colored with red. He didn't feel himself move, but he blinked and then he was on the werewolf, tearing him away from Stiles, claws planted deep in the werewolf's shoulders. The guy howled in pain, twisting around to blindly slash at Scott, but Scott caught his wrist and gripped it tight, feeling the brittle bones grind under his crushing hold.

_Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!_

The audience was going crazy, but their cries were just a mere background noise. On the forefront of Scott's mind were Stiles' little sounds of choked off pain, his wheezing and coughing that would have been completely overwhelmed by the crowd's roaring its elation if Scott hadn't been so attuned to his friend. It made Scott's heart miss a few beats. At the corner of his eye he saw Stiles trying to pick himself up; the werewolf saw it too and jerked forward, like he was trying to get himself out of Scott's grasp to go at Stiles again. Scott reacted on instinct, no conscious thought needed. His own arm moved in a blur and blood spurted. His opponent went limp, slumping over Scott and smearing his blood everywhere on him.

Hurrahs and whoops of joy erupted all around him, and Scott suddenly snapped back into himself. He hurriedly pushed the body away and watched it crumple onto the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

Allison was at his side in an instant. “Scott?” she murmured. “Are you okay?”

Scott couldn't speak, like he'd run out of words and was reduced to raw sensations: the warm sticky blood on his chest, the metallic tang of it, the roars of the crowd in his ears, the way his heart was still pumping hard in his ribcage. Stiles stepped up to him, mouth open like he was about to speak. But he had one look at Scott's face and whatever he saw there must have made him think better of it, because he snapped his mouth shut.

They were chained again and led out of the cage. Out of the haze that surrounded Scott, an image sprung at him, clear and precise like a movie in high-definition. Miller was there, standing at the edge of the tunnel taking them back to their cell with a stout, middle-aged balding man in a suit that look expensive. She was saying, “—was quite a show, wasn't it, Mr. Catron?” The man didn't answer but his eyes met with Scott's, and something about the way he looked at him made a chill creep up Scott's spine. There was something calmly assessing about it, like the man was looking at an interesting display in a museum rather than at a fellow human being. It didn't last more than a second, and then Scott was dragged away with Stiles and Allison and they were shoved into the shower room for their usual post-fight wash up.

Scott was grateful for once that their clothes were going to get thrown away, because having to clean up the blood that had splashed onto his skin was nauseating enough. He thought about the half-dozen times he'd seen Allison and Stiles wash someone else's blood off themselves and not thought much of it beyond being grateful that they were still alive. He'd had it so easy. All along he'd thought he was protecting them but in fact he'd let them kill—let them do the dirty work—just so his own hands could stay clean. His hands—

Scott's hands were shaking, and it wasn't entirely from the cold water pouring over him. The claws had retracted and at the tips of his fingers only blunt, human fingernails remained. He pressed his back against the wall and slid down to the floor, ass hitting the tiles with a wet slap. 

“Hey, Scott.”

Stiles crouched in front of him, and Scott expected him to reach out for him, but he didn't. There was a red mark around his throat where the werewolf had tried to choke him. He looked at Scott; a wry, pitiless sort of look—but not unkind either. Scott felt naked under that stare—he was literally naked, of course, and so was Stiles, but he'd gotten used to it and it didn't bother him much that he'd seen his best friend's dick and vice-versa a lot more often than was probably prescribed by the bro code. That sense that all his defenses were stripped by Stiles' unflinching gaze, all his flaws and hypocrisies coming up to the light—that was a lot more unsettling than a simple lack of clothing. 

“I killed him,” he said numbly. 

The water stopped falling from above him and Allison sat down with them, drawing her legs to her chest in a way that covered her breasts and crotch. 

“I know, dude,” Stiles said. “Welcome to the club—and thank you, by the way.”

“What?”

“Thank you—you saved my life. He was going to kill me, Scott, but you didn't let him.”

“I would never,” Scott said, balking at the notion that he could have _let_ it happen. “You know I wouldn't.”

He wiped a hand across his face, frustrated by how slowly his thoughts moved. Somehow he hadn't really made the connection between not letting Stiles die and killing someone, as though they were two distinct events that had merely happened simultaneously. But now the thought cut through him like one of Allison's arrows—Stiles dying, _his_ throat slashed by werewolf claws—and the pain it caused was so sharp, so acute that Scott choked on it for a moment. 

“Scott? Breathe with me, man, okay? You have to breathe.”

“No, no, I'm not—” Scott stammered, struggling to get his words out. “I'm not having a panic attack.”

“Oh. Okay, um. Are you—?”

Scott took hold of Stiles' wrist and then of Allison's hand, and clutch them both hard.

“I'm fine,” he gritted out, but it was probably obvious to his friends that he was lying through his teeth.

If Stiles died, half of his world would crumble to dust. They'd been best friends for years and pack mates for months, but everything that had happened to them since their kidnapping had added yet another layer to that. Same with Allison—the intensity of their first meeting and the beginning of their relationship paled compared to what they had now, the bond that blood and captivity had forged between them. His whole life had been snatched from under his feet: his mother, his friends, his pack, school, his dreams for the future. Without Stiles and Allison there really would be nothing left of him.

“Scott...” It was Allison, looking at him with her brow furrowed. She flicked her wet hair out of her eyes. “We're not going to tell you it was okay, because it wasn't.” She shared a furtive glance with Stiles. “If we'd been able to, you know we would have kept—”

“No,” Scott said. “It's not—you shouldn't have to take this upon yourself, just because I'm too much of a coward...” The words got lost on their way to his mouth.

“Scott,” she said gently.

“I love you,” he said, feeling the words bubble out of him with burning urgency. “Both of you, I mean. I—”

He could feel that love inside him like a physical thing, and it wasn't the warm glow he was used to, comforting and reliable, but an edged, cutting feeling that ripped through his insides. He would kill— _had_ killed, and would kill again for them. If it was the last thing he did, he would make sure that Allison and Stiles got out of this alive.

Stiles slapped him on the thigh. “We know, and we love you too, buddy,” he said, standing up. “I'm freezing my ass off, and I think our Cerberuses are getting impatient. Let's go back to the comfort of our suite.”

\---

Scott was quiet the next day, but not alarmingly silent like Stiles had been after his first kill, and Allison thought he was going to be okay. Or at least, as okay as any of them could be these days. Miller came to coo her approval at Scott, calling him a 'good little werewolf', and Allison thought for a moment that Scott was going to jump her—Allison herself barely managed to hold herself back. That night they were given a blanket, and, although no one outright said it, the meaning was clear: a good performance warranted a reward. If they played their part, their lives would get easier. If they didn't—well, they had already received that particular message loud and clear. 

They were moved a couple of days after this. At first, when they were chained up and taken out of their cell, they'd naturally thought they were about to go fight, but when they were also blindfolded and put on the back of a van, panic settled in all three of them.

“Where are you taking us?” Stiles had wanted to know. “Where's Miller? What's going on?” It had only earned him a backhanded slap across the face.

In the end, they were locked inside a similar sort of cell than before, although this one had a small window, more like a hatch, really, and for the first time in weeks they could actually get some daylight. Stiles thoroughly explored their new home for weaknesses, but it turned out to be as hermetic as their former cell had been. 

As a coping mechanism for his ADHD, Stiles had taken to observing their surroundings and recording everything in the hope that he would spot a weakness that would allow them to escape. He watched their guards closely—most of them former military or law enforcement, he said—trying to figure out how many of them there were in total from the frequency at which they saw familiar faces again, how they worked their rounds, trying to spot the surveillance cameras whenever they were let out. They saw other doors, presumably leading to cells like theirs, but they were never able to catch sight of any of the other prisoners. 

Scott, for his part, spent a lot of time just listening for any piece of information they could use. Most of the guards were generally careful about speaking in front of them, but they also obviously weren't fully aware of just how acute an Alpha werewolf's hearing was, and sometimes they let things escape when they thought Scott couldn't hear them.

Allison left them to it. She wasn't very hopeful that they would manage to escape, and preferred to concentrate on fighting for their survival until they were rescued. Scott may think of himself as their protector, it was both Scott's instinct and an Alpha one, but Allison knew that among the three of them, she was the fighter. When they were in the cage, she sometimes could hear her mother whisper to her. _If you don't want them to die, you need to_ win _this fight. Don't let yourself be distracted—you have to forget about everything else. Do it, Allison!_ She knew it was only her mind's way to help her deal with everything, but the voice sometimes sounded so real that she almost teared up. _Crying isn't going to help you do what you need to do, Allison._

“I heard that name again,” Scott was saying, tearing Allison away from her thoughts. Today was one of their days off and they were sitting in a circle, discussing their situation.

“The doctor's name?” Stiles asked. His hands always had to keep busy, and he was currently rethreading the shoelace in his left sneaker. He'd gone through that process a couple times already.

“Yeah. I'm pretty sure her full name is 'Cara Robinson'.” 

“Hmm.”

Dr. Robinson was a name Scott had heard several times in the guards' conversations, and it was Stiles' theory that she was the chimeras' creator. Allison didn't disagree with him, but she wasn't sure how helpful it was to them. 

“There was something else,” Scott said. “They were talking about her in the past—you know, like she was dead.”

“If she's dead,” Allison said, “does it mean that they're going to run out of chimeras to throw at us?” She felt hopeful about it for a second, until she realized that it would also mean they would have outlasted their use.

“Maybe,” Stiles said. He'd started on his right shoe now, his fingers shaking a little. “But I'm not so sure. The way they've set those matches—the fact that they made them death matches—they need to be pretty sure they're not going to run out of fresh meat. They must know how to make more. You know, maybe Dr. Robinson only thought out the science behind it—maybe she never willingly cooperated, and that's why she's dead now.”

“Do you think Deaton might know about this?” Scott asked. “I wish we could ask him.”

“I still can't tell if Deaton knows everything, or knows nothing and is always winging it. In any case, he would probably just throw cryptic bullshit at us until we figure it out ourselves.”

“This is a lot of speculations based on a name. And anyway, what can we do with that information?” Allison said, but she regretted it when she saw Stiles' face twist in a grimace. Scott shot her a reproachful look: speculating was Stiles' way to stay sane; it didn't matter that it was futile, and she wasn't helping by pointing it out.

Stiles stood up and started walking barefoot around the cell. Allison opened her mouth and was about to issue an apology, when he bent over and picked up a bit of cement gravel. Then he crouched, facing the corner, and started tracing something on the wall with the piece of gravel.

“What are you doing?” Allison asked instead of her apology.

“Leaving a message. Cara Robinson's name, I'm leaving it here.”

Allison shared a look with Scott, who didn't look like he understood what Stiles was doing either. “A message for _who_?” she asked.

Stiles stopped in his task for a moment. “Anyone who finds it,” he said at first, but then he shook his head like it wasn't what he'd meant to say. “For Lydia.”

“How's _Lydia_ going to get that message?”

“We've been moved before, we're probably going to get moved again. Our parents are looking for us, you know they are. Maybe Derek has come back from South America with Isaac and Cora, and they can track us by scent and find this place, and you know Lydia, she'll want to be involved, so you know, maybe—” 

“Stiles—”

He sighed, and swiveled on the balls of his feet to look at her. “I know it's a long shot—more than a long shot, an _impossible_ shot. I'm not stupid, I know that, okay? I just need to do it—I can't not do it, I can't give up, because if I do then I'm letting _it_ win.”

Maybe he'd had his pronouns mixed up and meant 'them', but Allison instinctively knew what he was talking about because she could feel it too: he was referring to the darkness they all had in them. They never talked about it, the same way that, for all they speculated about the chimeras and the people who'd captured them, they never talked about the fights, about the killing. They couldn't give it power by making it real, but they could feel that the less they had to hold onto, the deeper the darkness anchored into their hearts, until all they could do was cling to each other at night, using each other as a shield against it.

She wanted to say that if Derek or one of the other werewolves could track them by scent, then they would have been found already. But no doubt he knew that, and hope was a flimsy thing but it was all they had right now. That, and each other—so she said nothing. 

Scott cleared his throat, breaking the momentary tension that had taken its hook into them. “Okay. I mean, it can't hurt. But I don't get it, it looks like you're writing numbers? What's that about?”

Stiles' face lit up with a smile. “Ah, see, that's 'cause my message is coded, of course! You don't think I would let them be aware of how much we know, do you? So I can't just write the name and hope they just don't find it.”

Stiles started explaining his code to Scott, and Allison tuned them out, content to let the sound of their chatter pour over her, a background music that helped her relax. She was hungry, but it was still a few hours until their meal, and her elbow was sore where she'd bumped it in a fight. All she could do about it was try to distract herself. Stiles' mention of Lydia turned her thoughts to her friend, and she wondered how she was doing. She must be worried about them. Was she helping look for them like Stiles thought? Was she trying to forget about them and go on with her life? Was she still hooking up with Aiden, or did she have a new boyfriend? The last thought brought in full force a memory of soft lips against hers and a sure hand around her waist, and Allison felt herself redden. 

“Something wrong?” Scott asked, frowning at her. She wondered if he'd smelled something on her, and it only made her flush even harder.

“No, nothing, I was just thinking—remembering something. I'm fine,” she added, and smiled at him.

His frown softened but he still looked confused, and Stiles looked vaguely amused. Allison felt an urge to tell him what exactly she'd been remembering, just to wipe that look off his face, but then he was back to tracing his message and the moment passed.

 _I hope you're okay_ , she thought in Lydia's general direction. Whatever Lydia was doing, even if it was moving on and forgetting about them, it was important that one of them at least be fine. 

\---

The next time they were moved, they were ready for it and Stiles didn't feel the same alarm as before; at least, not until they were led through a glass door into a room lined up with animal-sized cages. When he realized that the men meant to shove him into one of these things Stiles started to fight back, trying to duck under their arms and make a run for the door. He was caught quickly and got a punch to the stomach for his trouble, and a casual threat from one of them, a lean scruffy Asian dude that Stiles had noticed before for his quiet enjoyment whenever he had to kick one of them around: “Do you want me to shoot your friend? He’s gotta be used to it, by now.”

“Okay, okay,” mumbled Stiles, folded in two from the pain. “No need to get nasty.”

None of the cages looked big enough for three human beings—they barely looked big enough for one—but the fact that it wasn't a surprise when they were put in three different cages didn't mean that Stiles could help the pang he felt at being locked on his own. He could barely sit up, and was immediately assaulted by a claustrophobic feeling when the barred door to his cage closed on him. 

The guards left through the glass door again, and when it locked behind them with a _bip_ that suggested an electronic system, Stiles pressed his face to the bars, but he couldn't see much of it.

“This looks like a kennel,” Scott said despondently. 

“Do you think you could break through the glass door?” Stiles asked, ignoring his friend's comment. He'd had the same thought, but he didn't want to dwell on it. “Like, if you had enough momentum?”

“I'm sure the glass is pretty solid,” Allison said. “Probably bulletproof.”

Stiles ignored her too. “Scott, can you try the bars? See how solid they are.”

He heard the rattling sound of bars being shaken, then Scott said, “Feel pretty solid to me. If I had more room, so I could get some leverage, maybe.... Not without making a lot of noise, though.”

He sounded apologetic about it, so Stiles told him not to sweat it and sat back against the wall, finally defeated. His abs ached from the punch he had taken earlier, and now that the adrenaline rush of finding himself in a new place had subsided, he felt weary to the bone. 

The cage wasn't big enough for him to do any of Allison's exercises, and the familiar crawling-ants feeling came back with a vengeance. He fidgeted, changed positions ten times a minute, exchanging a few words now and then with Scott and Allison. He was too restless, and all of them too tired for a real conversation. He didn't like that he couldn't see them. He hated that he couldn't _feel_ them. Night came and Stiles tried to settle for sleep. There was only enough room in the cage for him to lie down if he bent his legs at the knees and curled in on himself, so he did, and crossed his arms over his chest, stuck his hands under his armpits to keep them warm. He closed his eyes, praying for sleep.

Allison's voice echoed in the room: “Good night, guys.” She sounded so far away; just the fact that she wasn't whispering it into his ear meant that she was definitely too far.

“Good night,” Scott answered.

Stiles shut his eyes tighter, then let out a frustrated groan.

“I'm not going to be able to sleep,” he declared.

“Do you want me to sing you a lullaby?” Allison asked, a teasing lilt to her voice.

“Maybe we should just talk for a little longer,” Scott said. “Until you feel comfortable enough to—”

“No, you guys need your sleep. Tomorrow—” Didn't bear thinking about. “I think I'll just—”

“Somehow, I don't think you can face insomnia quietly,” Scott said. 

It didn't sound like a reproach but rather like a statement of fact, and, yeah, fair enough. Scott did know him better than anyone else—not that this was a particularly hard guess for anyone who had only just _met_ him.

“Let's talk about something light,” Allison suggested. They all fell silent at that, then after a moment, Allison said, “Did I ever tell you about the time Lydia and I made out?”

“What?” Stiles sat up too fast and hit his head against the side of his cage. “How? When?”

“Well, there was lip contact, and hands were involved too—”

Stiles kicked the bars from his cage to tell her to quit being a smartass. “Okay, okay, I get the idea. When did that happen?” It occurred to him that Scott was being strangely silent about this. “You knew about it, Scott?”

“Uh, yeah? Allison told me.”

“How come no one tells me _anything_?”

“Now you know,” Allison said dryly. “As to when—it was a couple of months ago, after I came back from France but before class started. It wasn't—it only happened once. We didn't talk about it much afterwards. She was getting over Jackson, and I was getting over—”

“Me,” Scott said, earning himself points for the most useless comment ever.

“Sooo,” Stiles said, not wanting to let awkwardness settle. “I guess it means all of us have kissed Lydia, then. This is an interesting, albeit not terribly surprising fact.”

“What do you mean?” Scott asked, just as Allison was saying, “Oh, yes, I guess it does.”

“What are you talking about?” Scott asked again. “You kissed _Lydia_ —when? Why didn't you tell me? Why did you tell _Allison_?”

“I didn't tell Allison!”

“Lydia told me,” Allison said. 

“What did she say?” Stiles couldn't help but ask, wondering how Lydia had spun it to her best friend. 

“Just that she'd kissed you. It didn't look like she wanted to talk about it, so I didn't ask.”

“Oh, okay.” He didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed that Lydia hadn't felt like sharing more. “Well, it was just—It was nothing, really. I was—it was when Jennifer kidnapped our parents, you know, and I'd just gotten Isaac's text about Chris, and I thought—that's it, she got all of them and she's going to kill them. You know.” He felt himself getting choked up at the mere thought, even though his dad had been saved and _he_ was the one in trouble now—yeah, that last thought didn't really help. “So it kind of triggered a panic attack? And Lydia's solution to break me out of it was to kiss me. That's it. That's the whole story. Not very glamorous, huh?”

“Oh. Why—”

“Dude, I didn't tell you because it was humiliating, okay? When I envisioned my first kiss with Lydia—and believe me, I have, many times—it didn't feature me curled up on the floor, desperately trying to take a full breath.”

“Dude, you know I wouldn't have judged you for it, right?”

Stiles felt something warm swell inside his chest. It was the utter earnestness in Scott's voice that sold it. 

“I know, man.” 

His hand twitched by his side and he curled it into a fist. He ached for physical contact in a way he never had before. He'd always been a pretty tactile person, but this was different. This felt closer to his irrepressible need to move even when the situation called for stillness. He hadn't realized how much touch had kept him grounded until he couldn't rely on it anymore.

“So, uh.” He cleared his throat and swallowed. He couldn't get too emotional right now, because if he did he wasn't sure he could stop, and emotions wasn't what he needed to survive the mess they were in. They would only get in the way. “How did it feel? Making out with Lydia.”

“I thought you just said that—” Scott trailed off, ending on a confused sound.

“Yeah, no, that was like, a two-second close-mouthed kiss, and I was out of my damn mind. That totally doesn't count.” Neither Scott nor Allison said anything. “Come on, guys! Don't hold out on me! It looks like I'm going to die a virgin, so let me at least live vicariously through you!”

He heard himself say the words and winced, leaning his forehead against the bars. That was probably several kinds of inappropriate, right? He was never the best judge for it, but he didn't want to make Scott or Allison uncomfortable or dwell too much on their situation, so he opened his mouth to say, _never mind_ , but Allison spoke before he had the chance to do it: “Soft. Her hair's really soft, I couldn't stop raking my fingers through it. And Lydia is really—determined, I guess? Like, I didn't know what I was doing, I'd never made out with another girl before, and I don't think she had more experience than me, but she just pushed me against the bed, and—”

“She smells really good,” Scott said. “That's what I remember.”

“She's a _really_ good kisser.”

“Better than me?” Scott asked with the hint of a whine.

“Oh, yeah.”

Stiles propped himself up against the back wall of his cage, shifting until he was in a more or less comfortable position. All that talk of kissing and Lydia was turning him on, and wasn't it an amazing testament to the endurance of teenage libido that he could get hard after he'd been kidnapped, forced to kill for other people's entertainment, and thrown into a fucking cage to spend the night? Scott and Lydia making out. Yeah, that was hot. _Allison_ and Lydia making out, goddamn. He spread his knees, trying to give his dick some room.

“Why haven't you guys tried to date?”

“Well, I think all she wanted was to make Jackson jealous, and also you probably would've tried to kill me?”

“I was talking to Allison, but, yeah, good point.”

“I—” Allison's voice was reduced to a soft, barely there murmur. “Lydia wasn't interested in a relationship. Not after Jackson. And, I, well, I think it was too early for me too.”

“Would you now? I mean, if we make it out of here, and, and we can go back to our lives, would you ask Lydia out?”

“I don't know, what about you?”

He snorted. “I don't think she's interested in me.”

“She kissed you,” Allison pointed out.

“She was just trying to stop my freak out.”

“I don't know, this doesn't seem like the most intuitive way to do it. And I don't think Lydia would kiss anyone she wasn't at least a bit attracted to.”

Allison probably had a point. Did it matter, though? Lydia, like anything belonging to their real lives, felt as out of reach as a dreamland peopled with unicorns.

“Scott?” Stiles called, noticing that Scott had been silent for a while. “You okay in there, buddy?”

“Uh? Oh, yeah, sorry. I think I was starting to fall asleep.”

Guilt churned in Stiles' stomach. Scott didn't talk about it, but he was still reeling from his first kill and Stiles knew it affected his sleep. “Get some rest,” he said gently. “Long day tomorrow.”

“What about—”

“I'll be fine. I'm pretty tired too. Good night, Scott. Good night, Allison.”

Scott and Allison both echoed with their goodnights, and their prison was once again silent. Stiles rubbed a hand over his face, and pressed his fingertips against his temple, trying the stave off the headache that was starting to form there. He was still half-hard, and a bit annoyed about it. He hadn't rubbed one out since they'd been kidnapped; he hadn't exactly had a lot of privacy, or the right mindset for it. Should he ignore it until it went away, or take advantage of the fact that he was relatively alone to seek a little relief? It wasn't like it was taking away from the sleep he was not having.

Decision made, he unlaced his pants, mindful of his bruised stomach, and slid a hand inside his underwear. His dick perked up at the touch, but he still felt too uncomfortable to really get in the mood. He sat up a bit straighter, shoulder blades scraping the wall, and almost banged his head on the roof of his cage. He stifled a curse then closed his eyes, trying to separate himself from his surroundings. He needed some good mental image to get him going—Lydia, it had started with Lydia, right? He thought of Allison going on about Lydia's hair, and the memory of Lydia flinging herself in his arms after he'd freed her from that trap in the woods came to him unbidden. He remembered the silky caress of her hair against his face, the scent of her shampoo in his nose. Allison had also said something about Lydia pushing her against the bed—yeah, yeah, oh yeah, that did it for him. Stiles pushed his underwear down a bit so he'd be able to speed his thrusts.

Out of the darkness, a soft groan from Scott broke the silence, and Stiles paused in his movement. Was it a sleepy groan, or... Could Scott hear him— _smell_ him, maybe—with those freaky werewolf senses of his? That simple possibility should be enough to make him stop, but Stiles' hand didn't seem to be answering his brain anymore because it started pumping again, up and down, down and up.

Could Allison hear him too? She didn't have werewolf senses but it was completely silent in there, no other noise to distract from the ones he was making, and the more he tried to be quiet, the more he felt he was being terribly loud: the _smack-smack_ of skin against skin, his heavy breathing, the sounds he was trying to hold down. If Allison wasn't asleep yet, then there was almost no way she couldn't hear him, and no way _Scott_ couldn't, and if they could then for sure they knew what he was doing, but they weren't saying anything, why weren't they telling him to stop, _oh god_. Stiles closed his eyes and bit his lip, feeling lightheaded from the efforts he was making not to breathe too heavily, almost choking on the moans that wanted out. This was so wrong—Scott was his bro and Allison was a bro's ex but also a forever love, and he really shouldn't put them in this situation, but his dick was a tough little trooper because it didn't hamper his arousal one bit. Stiles ended up spilling all over his hand, and had to wipe it on the floor.

Shivering from the cool temperature and his post-orgasm crash, he curled up once more and tried to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The next few weeks were hell for Lydia. Deaton had promised it would be challenging, and he hadn't been lying. He made her fast, and take suspicious mind-altering drugs that gave her terrifying hallucinations—Peter Hale, plunging his fingers down her throat in an attempt to merge with her, shushing her and murmuring how much he needed her all the way—had her go through the same ice bath ritual her friends had. It wasn't that they didn't get any results—almost daily she could hear whispers inside her head, sometimes the crowd again, sometimes voices that she could swear were her friends. But nothing useful ever came out of it, and that was what made her frustration grow exponentially with each day. 

On top of it all, she had to make sure her mother didn't suspect anything. Which meant getting up every day for school even when she was dead tired, pretending she had to work on school projects after class, locking herself up in her room when she was home, just so her mother didn't see the dark smudges under her eyes that makeup couldn't hide, or the way her hands sometimes shook. She could tell her mother was getting worried anyway, if only because she'd tried to subtly suggest Lydia start counseling again, but there was no avoiding that. Once they found her friends, everything would go back to normal—or at least, as normal as things could be in Beacon Hills. 

She usually went through the school day like a zombie, barely remembering anything of it afterwards. It didn't worry her much, because she could afford to miss weeks of class and still graduate top of her year, and graduating felt like a secondary concern as long as her friends were missing anyway. It meant that when one day she found herself in the music room without a memory of how she'd gotten there, she didn't think much of it at first. 

She checked her watch, saw that she only had mere minutes before her next class, and sighed in annoyance. Why had she come here? She didn't even have music class. Unless—

She'd been walking up to the door, hurrying to get to class, but she stopped herself, suddenly rigid and cold. The last time she'd been here, it had been because of one of her banshee trances. So maybe the same thing was happening here. Her heart started pounding harder.

“Okay, okay,” she murmured. “What's the message?”

She was feeling an urgent need to get out of here, so she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then another, falling into a pattern from one of the breathing exercises Deaton had taught her. She had this. She was controlling it—it wasn't something that just _happened_ to her.

It started as a barely audible murmur at the back of her mind, too hushed and distant to be noticeable if she hadn't been listening for it. It was the sound of a crowd again, buzzing and rumbling with excitement. Lydia opened her eyes, raking her eyes around the room. It was still deserted, nothing standing out: not the empty desks and chairs, not the instruments pushed back to the side, not the... The teacher's piano. Lydia took a few steps in its direction, and thought that the crowd in her head was getting louder. She went closer, lifted up the lid, and ran her fingers over the keys. Then she pressed a few of the keys, randomly trying them for sound. She couldn't have explained what she was looking for, but when she pressed one key and the murmurs in her head increased, she knew she'd found it. She tried all the other keys, and got the same result from some of them. She then played the sequence in various orders until she found one that sounded right. Again, she couldn't have told someone else what _right_ sounded like, but she played the notes several times until she was satisfied, and one thing Deaton had been adamant about was that she needed to trust her instinct, and not muddle the message by overthinking it.

Small tremors were running through her hands, but this time it was mostly excitement. She fumbled through the content of her school bag, found her notebook, and wrote the sequence using the numbering system she'd been taught when she'd had piano lessons as a kid. She shoved it back inside her bag and turned on her heels, planning to skip her next classes and go straight to Deaton. She was in such a hurry that she almost ran right into Aiden.

He caught her by her shoulders. “Hey! Lydia, what's going on? You look—”

“Let me go,” she said through her teeth, trying to rein in the urge to physically lash out. Not only would that be pointless given how much stronger than her he was, but she always thought of herself as above physical violence. “I have somewhere I need to be.”

“Tell me what happened,” he all but ordered her, making her hackles raise. “I followed your heartbeat, you sounded—”

“Are you stalking me?”

She shoved at him, and to his credit he stepped back willingly, looking bemused. “I just wanted to make sure you're okay. We've barely seen each other since—”

She made a disgusted sound. “That's what you're worried about? My friends are _missing_. I don't have the time or the right frame of mind to let you romance me. Why can't you get that?”

“I'm not suggesting you stop looking for them! Ethan and me are helping too, remember? But it doesn't mean you should stop living your life. I mean, I could help you get your mind off of things—”

He had the nerve to smirk a little there, stepping closer, like he thought it would be enough to make her run into his arms.

“No,” she said firmly, and he stilled. “What if it was your brother who was missing?” At the look on his face, she saw that it had never occurred to him that those two situations could be comparable. “I don't pretend to know anything about your relationship with him. But I care deeply about my friends. I haven't had that many people in my life I could really call that, people I could rely on. I have to do anything in my power to find them.”

“Okay,” he said, though he mostly looked confused. “I didn't mean to imply that you don't care about them. But, like, when we've found them, maybe—”

He looked hopeful. She ran through what she'd said in her mind, and realized how it could be taken as a ' _later, maybe_ '. She hadn't planned that far, to be honest. She had no brain space for thoughts of sex or romance these days. She looked him over, at his strong, sturdy frame, and remembered running her hands all over his abs. This had been nice, she couldn't deny it. And it wasn't that she didn't care about him—as much as she'd tried to limit herself to casual hook-ups since Jackson, she just wasn't wired in a way that allowed her to not give a damn at all about people who she had sex with. But just as the memories of their moments together were flitting through her mind, other memories came in: Allison, the feeling of her curves under her hand, her laughter against her lips; Stiles, shaking and panicking, that moment she'd felt him stop breathing when she pressed her mouth to his; Scott, squeezing her fingers as he adamantly told her he'd do his best to save the people whose death she foresaw.

“Lydia?” Aiden was frowning, probably sensing something in her heartbeat or her scent that he didn't like. 

She bit her lower lip. Allison, Stiles, and Scott were her friends. That was why she wanted to find them, and any other considerations were just... stray thoughts, idle fantasies. But it would be cruel to let Aiden keep his hopes up.

“I know you're trying to convince me you're a good guy, Aiden. But in order to really be a good guy, you need to convince yourself first and foremost. To do the right thing because it's right.” He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn't let him. “This isn't about me. Don't let this be about me. We had a lot of fun together, but it's over now. Do you understand?”

He looked frozen, like it had been the last thing he'd expected to hear from her. She could tell he was going to try to talk to her out of her decision, but now that she'd told him what she had to, the urgency from the message she'd received in the music room was returning, and she didn't want to waste any time getting to Deaton.

“I have to go, now,” she said. “I'm sorry,” she added, feeling a smidge of remorse at the stricken look on his face, and then marched past him, ignoring his calling her name repeatedly.

She found Deaton handling a nervous elderly couple with a puking cat, so she sat in the waiting room, studying the numbers she'd written on her notebook. She'd used that system because it had come to her naturally, and numbers always spoke to her, but now that she was looking at them the figures nagged at her mind, calling to her, like they _meant_ something. 

“Lydia?”

The sound of Deaton's voice made her jump. She'd been buried deep in her thoughts, but she'd also come to subconsciously associate him with a number of creative tortures, and it didn't matter if she'd always been a willing participant.

She got on her feet and shoved her notebook under his nose. “I got a message.”

“A message,” he repeated. 

From anyone else, it would been made to sound as a question, but Deaton said the words like he was only trying them out. He looked at the numbers for a few long, careful seconds, then back at her, an expectant expression on his face.

“From the piano,” she said. She shook her head, more to clear her mind than to express negation. “I sounded it out on the piano, at least. Each number represents a key—it was just a convenient way for me to write it down, but the more I look at it, the more I think the numbers themselves mean something. How does it make sense, though? I just—”

“Trust your instinct,” he said. “Don't try to apply reason to it.”

“I know,” she replied a bit snappishly. “I know that. The numbers must be some kind of cipher. A simple substitution cipher? Something more complex?”

“Don't approach it like you would any coded message. The key to this is probably more emotional than rational.”

“How can I not use _reason_ with a _coded_ message? I don't know how to do this! I don't know how to turn off my brain. _Damn it_.” 

Her hands were clutching the notebook hard enough to wrinkle the page, and she could feel her frustration mix with her exhaustion in a messy, hot ball that started in her chest and threatened to burst through her throat. Her head pounded. How was it fair? The first message she managed to get in weeks of putting herself through punishing abuse, and she wasn't equipped to read it! Stiles would be better at this, he was the one who could make crazy leaps in reasoning and have them work, who saw patterns in chaos with an infuriatingly accurate instinct. Stiles would—

 _Oh_.

“The numbers, they all—Calcium, radium, rubidium, indium, tin. Oh my god, that's it!”

She was babbling, not making any sense, and Deaton's normally unfazed composure cracked a little bit when he asked, “Lydia? What is it?” in a slightly puzzled tone.

She forced herself to slow down, grabbed the threads of the pattern she could see and weave them into something that made sense. “I think all the numbers correspond to an element in the periodic table. It's something Stiles—we were doing our chemistry homework together one day, and he said that the elements could be used to code a message, and I said it would limit the content of that message, but—Look! 20 is calcium, so _Ca_ ,” she said as she wrote it down. “And 88 is radium. 37 is rubidium—”

She frowned at the result: CaRaRbInSn. “It doesn't look like a word. A name, maybe? I imagine that some vowels have to be inserted between the consonants...”

She tried a few combinations until she found one that worked for her. “Cararobinson,” she read out loud. “Cara Robinson? Definitely a name, then. But without any context, I don't know how useful it can be.”

Her excitement over deciphering the message was dropping, and she felt once again defeated and tired. This person could be anyone, and this was assuming that Lydia hadn't made any mistake about it. It felt _right_ to her, but if you looked at it logically, then it didn't make any sense how that message could have gotten to her through such convoluted ways. How could she be sure?

She fell the weight of Deaton's hand rest on her shoulder. “We'll tell the Sheriff about it. He'll know what to do with that information. You did your part.”

She would have liked to do so much more, but she was tired enough that hearing this still brought her some measure of comfort. This was progress. She needed to take it one day at a time.

\---

They were only left in the cages for one night, and then immediately transferred somewhere else, to Allison's relief. On the way there, they speculated about why they had been moved twice in such a short time, and why they'd been put somewhere that had obviously not been designed for people-sized beings. 

“Something made them change their plans,” Stiles guessed. “They had to move us but none of their hide-outs were... available? Or safe? I don't know, but _something_ made them rush this.”

There was no way they could use this, supposing they were even right about it, but it was comforting to think that things weren't completely going their captors' way. When they arrived to their new location, instead of being taken to a new cell they were led into a different kind of room: the walls were bare but there were tatamis on the floor, a rack holding knives of various sizes, and wooden planks painted with targets on one end of the room. Allison, Stiles, and Scott looked at each other, unsure of what was going on.

“Look happy, kids, because this is recreation time,” Miller said. “Training,” she clarified when they returned her with blank stares. “You've done very well so far, much better than we ever expected.” She smiled a bright, excited smile that reminded Allison uncomfortably of her aunt. “You getting time to train will make for a better show. You can probably learn a lot from each other.”

Her eyes lingered on Stiles, who bristled, but then Miller looked at Allison with a knowing smile. Allison felt her hackles raise at the implicit challenge. 

“Also,” Miller said, “don't assume that because we're leaving you alone in a room with weapons you have more chances to escape than usual. We're just outside the door. If you're looking for trouble, all you'll get is a bullet—hopefully somewhere non-vital, but no guarantee.”

She patted the gun at her belt meaningfully, before leaving the room.

“She knows who you are,” Stiles said to Allison.

“Yeah,” Allison murmured, her eyes on the closed door.

“She didn't before, though. She must have done her research. I have to give her credit there: she must have balls of steel for being willing to endure Chris Argent's wrath.”

“What could she do, though?” Scott said. “It's not like giving back Allison with a note of apologies will soothe Allison's dad: 'oops, we're sorry, we didn't know. No hard feelings, right?' I can just imagine his face.”

Stiles snickered, and Allison cut in irritably, “I don't think Miller's in charge here, anyway. Remember that man you saw, Scott? He must be the one behind all this. I doubt this kind of man would be afraid of my dad.”

“Your dad's pretty scary,” Scott said.

“To a sixteen-year-old who wants into his daughter's pants, maybe,” Allison replied. She didn't want to think about her dad; every time she did she automatically thought back to how she'd lectured him about their new hunter code, and how far she'd fallen from it. _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent se protéger eux-mêmes_. Yeah, right. “Okay, we don't know how much time we're given to train, so we should get started. Stiles? Let's go over the bases again now that we have actual room to spar.”

Scott went to poke at the knives, and Stiles shuffled his feet toward the center of the room with Allison, grumbling a little. 

“What?” she said, annoyed. “Don't you want to get better?”

He sighed, and the expression on his face shifted—she realized then that he had merely been giving her shit, but he now looked serious. “No, yeah, I want to. It's not like I don't know that out of the three of us, I'm the lesser fighter, to put it mildly.”

“Don't sell yourself short. You've done very well for someone who's never been trained.”

He smiled. “Don't act too nice with me, Allison, or it'll go to my head. Anyway, I'll probably always be the most obvious target, because Scott is a fucking werewolf, and you, like, hold yourself like a warrior.” He sounded matter-of-fact rather than like he was trying to pay her a compliment. “We can use this to our advantage, as long as I can actually give them some hell.”

“Okay, so let's do this.”

They worked on the bases for a little while: she corrected his stance, showed him how to throw a punch and give it more power by turning his foot and rotating his body, demonstrated a basic round kick to him.

“It's preferable that you hit your opponent with your shin rather than your foot: the shin is the hardest, largest bone on the leg that you can use in a fight.”

“Okay, roger that. Hard is good.” She made a face and he smirked impishly. “Sorry.”

Scott had abandoned the knives and was watching them, and Allison beckoned him to come over. 

“Are you just going to laze around while we're working?” she said, smiling to show that she was teasing. “Why don't you join us?”

“I don't know, I'm—I mean, I'm a lot stronger than you two. I could hurt you.”

Allison rolled her eyes. “You don't go around breaking stuff all the time, do you? So you're in total control of your strength. Stiles and I will be fine. Come on, I want to show Stiles how to do a clinch hold. I'll use you as a training dummy.”

He raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment and walked up to her. When she told him to he compliantly folded on himself so she could hook an arm over his neck while he circled her chest so that they were holding each other in a neutral lock. Scott's face was pressed to the side of her chest and she had her nose almost in his hair. He was warm against her, a block of compact muscles, and she could feel his heartbeat reverberating in her back. 

“Okay, so—” She cleared her throat, finding her mouth a bit too dry to speak. “Here Scott and I have each other in an underhook, so none of us have the advantage. Having two underhooks is the advantageous position. You can transition to this position from double underhooks—let me show you.”

They kept training and after a while, Allison ceased to be so acutely aware of Scott and it became more comfortable. Allison and Stiles wrestled each other for practice, and then Scott and Stiles tried sparring too but it quickly dissolved into good old-fashioned rough-housing, both of them rolling over the floor like two over-sized puppies.

“Okay, quit it, you two!” Allison admonished them, although she was trying to hide a smile. It was fun to watch them act as they should, like two teenage boys who had been best friends from childhood. 

Scott had pinned Stiles to the floor, holding him there by pressing all his weight down on his chest, and they were both laughing when the door opened. The boys' laughter died at once, and Allison stiffened. Scott sprang to his feet and held a hand out to help Stiles up. The man who'd just entered was holding his rifle like he was ready to use it, and he was shadowed by two similarly armed men. Miller was nowhere to be seen.

“Playtime's over,” the man said gruffly. “You're getting back to your cell.”

Scott walked over to the door, not threatening in any way, but he still earned himself a hard look. “No funny business, mutt.”

Scott held his hands palm up. “I won't try anything. I promise.”

The man narrowed his eyes like he found Scott's very earnest tone suspicious, which admittedly was fair for someone who didn't know Scott's infinite capacity for earnestness. They were all patted down to check if they weren't taking any of the knives back to their cell, then ushered out of the room at gunpoint. 

Allison wasn't surprised when the next day they were taken out for a new fight. Allison and Stiles were both given knives—a pair of 7-inch steel blades with leather handles—and Allison regretted not doing any knife training the day before. She talked Stiles very quickly through it: “Your stance is very important, okay? You need to be very mobile—don't hold your knife that way! You risk cutting yourself. Hold it forward—look, let me—”

She arranged his fingers around the handle to her satisfaction, then closed her own fingers on his wrist, holding his eyes for a moment. “Don't stab yourself with this, or I'll be very pissed.”

“Pointy end goes into the enemy, got it.”

Allison exchanged a concerned look with Scott: the weapons, added to the fact that they'd been given time to train, meant that the organizers were upping the violence. Scott had his claws and fangs out and his eyes burned red. The other end of the cage opened, and the hum from the audience's idle chatter cranked up a notch, becoming high-pitched and excited.

Two teenagers were pushed inside, both boys: one of them was a big bulky black guy with a passing resemblance to Boyd, while the other was a thinner white boy with a mop of dark hair. They both looked outwardly human, no visible fangs or claws, no tails, no glowing eyes. All the other chimeras had already changed when the fight started, and the apparent harmlessness of their opponents made Allison uneasy.

“We let them come to us,” Stiles whispered while their fight was announced in the usual grandiloquent terms. “Don't let them touch you before we have an inkling of what they can do.”

“We need to get close if we want to get to use the knives,” Allison said.

“Then Scott, maybe—”

“I'll attack them,” Scott said immediately. “Force them to show us their moves.”

“There's two of them, though,” Allison said. “We don't even know if they're the same—mash-up.”

“Okay, then—”

They didn't have any more time to talk strategy, because the bell rung and it was time to fight. Allison felt her previous nervousness dissipate: her heartbeat settled down, her breathing slowed. Scott ran to the two boys, trying to take them at once, but maybe they'd discussed strategy with each other too because they immediately sprang apart, leaving Scott to deal with the black kid.

“Let's take on this one together,” Stiles murmured to Allison. She merely nodded her approval.

Their opponent had a handsome, friendly face, the kind Allison could see herself falling for if they hadn't been facing each other in a death match. He was also watching them with a calculating look that took Allison by surprise. In their previous matches their opponents had been enraged, almost out of it, to the point Allison had wondered if something had been done to them to make them more combative. They'd been able to exploit it and it had allowed them to come on top every time, but she could see it wasn't going to work out as well this time. She shared a look with Stiles—his face was bleak, so he had probably come to the same conclusion.

The three of them circled each other for a moment, until the chimera lost patience and jumped at Stiles, probably having judged him the weakest. Stiles slashed at the space between, preventing the kid from getting closer, and Allison took advantage of the fact that Stiles had their enemy's attention to circle around him, trying to catch him from behind. She managed to grab him in a chokehold, but then she felt something tug at her sleeve and she yelped in surprise, reflexively letting her prisoner go.

“What the hell!” Stiles exclaimed. “That looked—”

“Look out!”

Stiles didn't have the time to heed Scott's warning before he was jumped by the guy Scott had been fighting. Scott, all wolfed out and bleeding from a few different wounds, immediately rushed to his friend's help, tearing the black kid off Stiles and hurling him against the fence, triggering cries of delighted fear from the spectators who'd been standing a little too close. 

“He has—little mouths—everywhere!” panted Scott. “On his neck, on his, his—”

Allison had no more than a second to puzzle over what he meant. The guy she'd let go had scuttled away from her to go after Stiles again. He chopped at Stiles' ankle, making him lose balance. Stiles fell on his hands and knees, and before he could get up or roll over to have enough leverage to use his knife, his opponent had pinned him to the ground.

The one Scott had thrown against the fence was getting back to his feet, so Allison shouted at Scott, “Take care of him!” before she ran to Stiles' aid. Stiles was trying to throw his opponent off him, but when the guy grabbed him by the shoulder, Stiles screamed in pain.

_What the—He just touched him!_

_Do you think Stiles has time for your musings, Allison?_

Her mother's voice snapped Allison right back into the fight, and she grappled with the guy wrestling Stiles to make him let go. When she managed to tear him away she caught sight of the palm of his hand: in the middle of it there was an oval mouth full of sharp teeth, hungrily gnawing away at nothing.

Allison recoiled a bit in horror. _Oh god._

She wrapped her arm around his torso and tripped him, bringing him down too fast for him to use that horrible mouth on her. She pinned him to the ground and straddled his back, trapping his arms under her knees, and at first he tried to push himself up. When he couldn't get her off him, he tried to wriggle from under her and escape at her rear.

 _You need to finish him NOW!_

Allison clamped her knees tighter and leaned over the kid, who was swearing under his breath. “Shit, _shit_. Get off me, bitch!”

She grabbed his thick mane of brown hair to tilt his head toward her and he squeaked, eyes moving wildly in panic. With her knife, she cut the exposed throat. _The deeper you go, the quicker it will be._ This was something her father had told her, but she still heard it in her mother's voice. Blood squirted from the severed carotid, splashing Allison's hand. The kid's eyes had turned completely white and he was gasping and coughing, ugly garbling coughs that made the blood flow harder. Allison waited until the stream of blood started to dry up, then wiped her hands on her shirt and stood up, leaving her victim weakly squirming on the floor.

“And this is another win for our favorite team!” The audience exploded with joy. 

Allison looked for Stiles, who was had risen to his knees, clasping his bloody shoulder. Then she looked for Scott, who was standing, looking down on the body at his feet. The Boyd-lookalike was dead too, no visible blood on him but with his head at an odd angle from his shoulders. Scott must have snapped his neck.

Stiles met her eyes. “We're alive,” he said.

She went to help him up, and took a moment to breathe into his neck as she did.

“Yes, we are,” she murmured. That had to count for something.

\---

In the shower, while Allison mutely washed the blood off her hands, Scott helped Stiles clean up his wound to the best of his ability, pulling away his pain through the process. 

“What the hell was—that thing?” Stiles ground out, twisting his neck to try to look at the wound. “Did you see his hand? That was teeth, right? There was like, like a mouth—oh god, he bit me with his fucking _hand_!”

“Stop moving so much,” Scott murmured as he examined the bite: there was a series of puncture marks forming a circle at the junction between Stiles' neck and shoulder. They were small but looked deep, and if they'd really been made by teeth Stiles was running a high risk of infection. Scott's stomach clenched at the thought.

When he was done cleaning the marks were still bleeding sluggishly, so Scott sacrificed a band of the clean t-shirt they'd been given to dress Stiles' shoulder. When he tried asking for some medical supplies, all he got in return was grumbles from the guards. 

Stiles pat him on the shoulder and said, “I'll be fine.”

Allison, who hadn't spoken at all since the end of the fight, brushed off Scott's concern in a similar way. “I'm okay,” she said. “It was just—a little gorier than usual, I guess.”

“You were pretty hardcore out there,” Stiles offered, and the smile Allison returned him looked almost genuine, so Scott told himself not to worry. 

The first thing he did upon waking up the next day was to check Stiles' wound, and he found that the skin around the puncture marks was red and puffy.

“It looks infected,” he said, trying to think past the uncomfortably hard pounding of his heart. 

He exchanged a look with Allison and read the same worry there: if it got worse, would the guards give them medical supplies? Would they let them see a doctor? It wasn't as if their captors would lose a second of sleep if one of them died.

He took a closer look at the wounds, pressing a bit against the edges until Stiles hissed, and saw that one of them was oozing a yellowish fluid. Yeah, definitely infected.

“How are you feeling?” he asked Stiles, who had been uncharacteristically quiet through the examination.

“Okay,” Stiles said. “Tired, I guess,” he added, then shrugged his other shoulder. 

They were all tired, of course—Scott wasn't sure he could remember what it felt like to be fully rested—but Stiles sounded flat in a way Scott didn't like. He was holding himself still but not in a tense way, and it was unusual because not moving should be an effort for Stiles, but now he was pliant in Scott's hands like an articulated doll. Scott frowned and pressed a hand against the back of Stiles' neck.

“It feels like you have a fever.”

Stiles sighed, like all the emotion he could muster about it was weariness. “I'm guessing this isn't good.”

“No, it isn't.”

Scott pressed his lips together, then went to the door of their cell and started pounding on it. “Hey!” he called. “ _Hey_! My friend's sick! Can you hear me? Hey!”

The eventual response was a hard pound from the other side of the door, enough that the panel shook from it.

“Yes, we can fucking hear you, mutt!” barked a harsh male voice. “Stop yapping or I'll shoot a bullet to your kneecap.”

Scott now knew to take that kind of threat seriously, but Stiles' health was at stake and he couldn't back down. “My friend's sick,” he repeated.

“What is it to me?”

“His wound got infected,” Scott explained as calmly as he could, even though he could feel his growing claws dig into his palms. He thought he might recognize the voice, and unless he was mistaken this particular guard didn't seem needlessly cruel. Maybe he could be reasoned with. “Can you get us anything to help? Even just some clean water and soap.”

Only silence answered him, but at least it meant that the guard was thinking about it. Scott decided to press his luck. “If it gets worse, he could die. Do you think your boss would want him to die here rather than in a spectacular fight in the cage?”

The guard groaned, mumbled “okay,” and Scott heard his footsteps echo away.

He went back to Stiles, who had sat in a corner with his arms around his knees and leaned against Allison on his uninjured side. Scott kneeled in front of him, and Stiles looked up.

“You really showed him who's the Alpha, Scotty,” he said. “'M proud of you, man.” His eyes had an unhealthy shine to them and his cheeks were flushed.

“They've kept us alive so far.” Scott tried to discreetly wipe his bloody palms over his dark pants, but Allison caught him doing it and shot him a look. “I don't think they'd want us to die when they can't bank on it.”

“Why am I not feeling comforted?” Stiles muttered, then pressed his forehead against his crossed arms. 

Scot swallowed uneasily, his worry having materialized into a lump blocking his throat. The fact that Stiles wasn't complaining about his wound, that had to sting like hell, or about the fever, did nothing to reassure him. Quite the opposite, actually, because Stiles was the type to whine endlessly over a stubbed toe, but walk on a broken leg in stoic silence. That he was so quiet right now meant he probably felt like utter shit. 

“Hey,” he called softly, cupping the nape of Stiles' neck again, but this time to comfort rather than to check his temperature. “You rest up, okay? Lie down with Allison.”

Immediately, Allison tugged Stiles down until he had his head on her lap, accompanying the movement with soothing murmurs: “Okay, come here, yeah, there you go.”

“I want it to be noted that I'm only caving because Scott looks ready to cry,” Stiles said, burying his face against Allison's thigh. 

“That's not true!”

Stiles opened an eye. “Sure it isn't. You big bad Alpha wolf, you.”

Allison chuckled softly, stroking a hand over Stiles' arm, and Scott fought a smile. Stiles would be fine; Scott wouldn't accept any other eventuality. He silently repeated his promise to himself, setting it in stone: _you will get them out of this; nothing matters but Stiles and Allison's survivals._

The guard brought them a basin of clear water and a bar of soap, and Scott went to work, washing the bite as thoroughly as he could, while Stiles bit down on his knuckles, stifling sounds of pain and curses.

“What the fuck are you doing back there?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Feels like you're slicing through my shoulder again, and let me tell you, once was enough.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Scott said quickly, wincing as more fluid spurted from one the marks. He started pulling away more of Stiles' pain, but Stiles shrugged him off. 

“No, stop it. You're going to take on too much of it.”

“Okay, fine. Here, I'm done.”

“Thank fuck.”

Stiles turned and sagged against him, looking spent, and Scott let him rest there for a moment, curling a hand on the back of his head. Since they couldn't reuse the soiled piece of fabric Scott had first bandaged the wound with, Allison tore a band from her own clothes and offered it to Scott. He tried not to let his eyes linger on the sliver of skin from her midriff revealed by the tear. 

Once he was bandaged again Stiles quickly fell asleep on Allison and Scott settled on her other side, throwing their blanket over them for warmth. Stiles slept fitfully, twitching and whining against Allison. He smelled like anxiety, but it wasn't unusual for Stiles and he needed the rest so they let him sleep, talking softly so they wouldn't risk waking him up. 

“Do you think he'll be okay?” Allison asked. She was playing with Stiles' hair, messing with it and then smoothing it back. 

“He'll be fine. Stiles's made of tough stuff. Bacteria aren't going to be the things that wear him down.”

“Scott.” Allison cocked her head, giving him a sideway glance. “Don't. Don't lie to me because you're afraid I can't handle the truth. I'm part of this nightmare too. We're a team, okay?”

Scott ducked his head. “Sorry. Sometimes I forget you're made of tough stuff too.” He felt gratified when it wrenched a smile out of her. “The truth is, I don't know. If we had access to antibiotics, if we could get him to a doctor, then it wouldn't be a problem. The fever worries me, but I wasn't entirely joking about Stiles being tough: his immune system is iron-clad. Trust me on this; I've rarely ever seen him get sick.”

“Okay,” she murmured.

She felt warm and solid against his side, and Scott couldn't help but admire the way the sunbeams falling from the high window drew golden lines on her dark curls, the shadows nestled in the hollow of her throat, the sweet roundness of her cheeks. 

“What?” she said, a hint of laughter in her voice. “What are you looking at?”

“You,” Scott said. He hesitated a second before going on, but they were living on borrowed time, so he should speak his mind whenever he could. “You're just so beautiful.”

She shook her head as if to counter his words, but he knew her, and knew what that dimple at the corner of her mouth meant: she was pleased by the compliment. She smelled like it, too.

“I'm not,” she said. “My hair's a mess, I'm wearing sweatpants and a torn t-shirt, and I think Stiles is drooling on me.”

“You don't need anything to look beautiful.”

She looked at him, and for a moment he couldn't breathe as he read in her eyes the same longing he felt. He thought maybe she would try to kiss him, and slightly parted his lips in anticipation, but the moment passed and she broke eye contact, saying lightly, “You're so corny.”

“I know,” he replied in the same tone. “Stiles tells me I should write Hallmark cards.”

“For once I happen to agree with him.”

They kept chatting on and off as the hours stretched indefinitely, only touching trivial topics like how hard Coach Finstock was probably riding the lacrosse team to compensate for Scott's absence, what superhero movie they wanted next, whether Lydia's hair qualified as red or strawberry blond and exactly how many pairs of shoes she owned. Scott saw Allison's leg jerk involuntarily before she shifted her weight with a wince, and he asked her, “Do you want to switch? You haven't moved for a long time, you must be feeling pretty stiff.”

Allison looked down on Stiles, whose eyes were moving wildly behind their lids. “We're going to wake him up if we move.”

“He'll go right back to sleep. The fever's knocking him down pretty hard.”

Scott took on Stiles' weight and held him while Allison wriggled from underneath him. Once she was free she stretched her legs with obvious relish, and Scott settled Stiles on his own lap; he had slept through the whole procedure and simply burrowed his face against Scott's stomach. He still felt hot to the touch, but any source of heat felt good in the coolness of their cell. Looking at the way his friend trustingly snuggled against him, Scott felt a swell of affection bubble inside his chest. Stiles looked so young like this, a throwback to their childhood years.

Allison scoffed. “It looks like we're pretty interchangeable to him.” She looked at her pants and made a disgusted sound. “Look at this,” she said, pointing at a darker spot on the fabric. “He _did_ drool on me, the jerk.”

Scott laughed, threading his fingers through Stiles' hair, noting how long it was now, and eventually Allison joined him. Her laugh was the best sound in the world, and he didn't care if that was a corny thought. He took a breath in, enjoying the way Allison and Stiles smelled a bit like him and like each other, as was always the case these days. For an instant there, his only wish was that they would be allowed to stay like this forever, the three of them huddled together in the protection of their cell.

\---

Stiles woke up on someone's lap, to the feeling of someone stroking his hair. He assumed it was Allison at first—his last clear memory was of falling asleep on her—but then the hand moved to cup his face and it was too big to be Allison's. It was tempting to keep pretending to be asleep and indulge in the comfort provided, but now that he was genuinely awake Stiles could feel the urge to move like a series of electrical shocks running through his limbs. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Scott's smiling face.

“How're you feeling?” Scott asked.

Stiles sat up with a groan, working the crick in his neck. He was sore everywhere, but at least he was relatively clear-headed and didn't feel anymore like there was burning sand behind his eyelids. His wound still stung, but not as much as it had before, which he took to be a good sign from his hazy memories of what he'd read about wound infection. He thought he might have been dreaming, and it left him with a fuzzy head and a foul taste in his mouth, but he couldn't remember anything about it. He actually couldn't remember any of his dreams since the kidnapping, but he figured it was probably for the best.

“I feel like shit,” he said with a heartfelt scowl, which for some reason made Scott grin even wider. “Dude, were you petting me?”

Scott responded with an unapologetic shrug. Allison was in the middle of their cell, doing push-ups. She stopped when she saw Stiles looking, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. Stiles took a moment to appreciate the way her sweaty shirt clung to her chest.

“How long did I sleep?” he asked, rubbing at his eyes and trying to get all the grit out.

“Most of the day,” Allison said. She tipped her chin in direction of the window and the dimming light that came from it. 

Scott pressed a hand on his forehead and Stiles tried not to lean into the touch. “You still feel warm,” Scott said. “But better than this morning.”

“I'll be fine,” Stiles said, unconcerned. 

“Scott told me about your marvelous immune system,” Allison said.

“It _is_ a thing of wonder,” Stiles said, punctuating his statement with a raised finger. “When I was a kid I ate all kinds of stuff off the floor and never once got sick from it. I ran around half-naked all the time, and—Oh, _woah_.” 

He'd started getting up as he talked, but his vision greyed at the edges and he swayed on his feet. Scott caught him before he could fall, guiding him back to the floor.

“Hey, take it easy, Rambo. You need to drink something, you must be pretty dehydrated from the fever. We kept your share of water.”

Allison brought him a half empty bottle of mineral water, and it was only when Stiles felt the divinely cool liquid down his throat that he realized just how thirsty he was. He gulped it down despite Scott's admonitions to take his time, until he choked and coughed up water all over his t-shirt.

“Why do you never listen to me?” Scott said mildly, giving him totally unhelpful slaps on the back.

“When do I listen to anyone?” Stiles said, but looked mournfully at the wet spots on his shirt. He shouldn't have wasted water; he knew they wouldn't be getting anything else for the day, and he had a suspicion that Allison and Scott had saved him more than his fair share.

They'd saved him some food too, more bland rice, and even though Stiles felt slightly nauseated he automatically forced himself to eat. He felt weak and a bit shaky, and knew he needed to keep his strength up. Eating awakened his appetite, and he was actually more hungry when he was done than before, but his rumbling stomach had become a constant companion—he had a theory that the amount of food they were given was probably calculated to keep them in a good enough shape to keep fighting, while weakening them enough that they didn't have the energy for anything else.

After his meal there was still some daylight left, and Stiles was now wide awake and too wired to even think about going back to sleep. Even though his wound hurt like a bitch he tried to do some sit-ups, but he was still feeling too poorly for that sort of exercising and almost blacked out after a series. 

“Settle down,” Allison told him firmly, shoving at him until he sat with his back on the wall.

They played several rounds of twenty questions, then charades. They tried to play Hangman but without anything to write with they lost track of what letter had been used already, and they tried Never I Have Ever, but it was kind of boring without alcohol. None of it was enough to capture Stiles' attention and he kept drifting away, missing his turn or getting confused about which game they were playing at the moment. His body was out of his control and he couldn't stop wriggling his leg, drumming his fingers on his thighs, shifting position every five seconds. It was annoying because he knew he was getting too restless to be able to sleep later, but there was nothing he could do about it. 

At some point Allison caught his hand in hers and squeezed it, so he stilled. By now it was dark outside, but still early enough that the electric light was on in the hallway and filtered through the opening on the door, and Stiles could make out Allison's face and the way she was frowning at him.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Don't apologize,” she said. 

It sounded like an order and he half-smiled, wondering how inappropriate it would be to tell her that her bossiness was kind of a turn-on. 

“What else can we do?” Scott said, sounding anxious. 

Good old Scotty, always so eager to help, Stiles thought fondly. He scratched his cheek—they hadn't been able to shave since they'd been kidnapped and the growing stubble itched like crazy. Even more annoying was the way the hair on his face grew in mangy patches, making his wannabe beard probably look ridiculous. Stiles' mellow feeling towards his friend turned into annoyance when he thought about Scott's ability to grow a proper beard. How unfair was that?

“Hey.” Allison wiggled her fingers in front of his face. “Are you with me?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Okay, so you can't exercise,” she said in a 'thinking out loud' voice, “but you'd feel better if you were engaged physically, am I right?”

“Yeah, but there aren't a whole lot of things we can do locked up in here.”

“Maybe if—you—” Allison was still holding his hand, and Stiles became a lot more aware of it when he realized that she had moved closer to him. “Something physical?” Her other hand suddenly materialized at the top of his thigh.

Scott made a surprised sound, and Stiles spluttered. “What are you—what? Allison, it sounds like you're offering to give me a handjob or something.” He tried to laugh, but it came out kind of strangled.

“Well,” Allison said, a little impatiently. “Would it help?”

“Er.” What was he supposed to answer to _that_? “I don't know. Maybe?”

“Okay. It can't hurt to try. Is it alright with you, Scott?”

Stiles couldn't hear Scott's mumbled answer through the deafening sound of his heart thumping inside his chest, but it must have been affirmative because then Allison was unlacing Stiles' pants while he gaped at her. This might have been, he thought dazedly, one of the most amazing things to ever happen to him in his short and yet eventful life, and the context was so unlikely that Stiles wondered for a moment if he was dreaming a badly scripted porn movie. It had to be a fever dream; there was no way this was reality.

Allison's hand closed around his dick and he gasped. “Oh my god.”

He was ashamed to admit to himself that that mere touch felt like heaven, the pain of his wound taking a temporary background to the pleasure. Allison's grasp on him was neither too tight nor too loose, and her hand was calloused from weapon handling but Stiles didn't mind it at all. She's gotten so close to him that their foreheads almost touched, and he could smell her—clean sweat and a whiff of the industrial soap they were given, but Stiles was used to the boys' locker room, and in comparison to that Allison's scent was a divine fragrance.

“Like this?” she asked. 

“A little—a little faster, maybe? A little rougher.”

She smirked, the dimple that popped at the corner of her mouth giving her a wicked look. “I can do that.”

She sped up her thrusts and Stiles thumped his head against the wall, trying not to come too quickly. He noticed that Allison's breathing had changed, becoming harsher and faster: evidence that this was affecting her too—that _he_ was affecting her, or maybe it was only the situation—and she wasn't just performing an impersonal service. He felt his abdomen contract with the spike of arousal that the realization brought.

“You—you can touch me,” she said, her voice higher-pitched than normal. “If you want to.”

Scott made a noise at that moment, halfway between a moan and a grunt. Stiles had almost forgotten he was there, and he tried to look at him past Allison, but Scott was swathed in shadows and Stiles could only see that he was sitting with his legs spread, chest heaving as he watched them. 

“Do you mind if I—um,” Scott said, sounding singularly breathless.

“Oh, uh, suit yourself, buddy,” Stiles said, and Scott didn't waste time shoving a hand down his own pants.

“Touch me, Stiles,” Allison said, and this time she sounded more authoritative than tentative. She had wedged herself between his thighs, his knees framing her hips.

“Okay, yeah, I want to, believe me, I _do_ , but— _oh_ —where, where can I—” he babbled, reaching out at the same time and touching her ribs.

“Wherever you want.” 

She'd breathed out her answer and Stiles groaned, closing his eyes. God, this was porn, actual, real life _porn_ , and his heart felt like it was trying to jump out of his ribcage, so it might just be the thing to kill him. Death by porn. How utterly ironic. He palmed her breasts through the fabric of her t-shirt—she had no bra, because her last one had disappeared with their original clothes, and apparently the Murder Tournament organizers didn't feel that bras were an essential item to be a killer. And for once, Stiles thought he might agree with them as he felt Allison's nipples harden under his thumb, and was rewarded by a hitch in her breathing.

“Allison, Alli—I think I'm—”

Scott was panting in the background, each of his breath loud and heavy in the silence of their cell. Allison's breath felt warm against Stiles' lips, not even an inch away. One twist of her wrist and Stiles' orgasm seared through him, and he had to bite his lip so he wouldn't scream and attract the guards' attention.

He opened his eyes, and saw that Allison was still very close, enough that he would just have to lean forward to kiss her. It felt like it was a moment made for kissing, but with Scott right there—Scott whose breathing had slowed down, so he must have come at about the same time Stiles had—it just seemed wrong somehow, and Stiles couldn't bring himself to cross the gap. Then the moment passed and Allison broke away from him, leaving him feeling the cool temperature more acutely than before. She licked her hand, and because Stiles' brain functions were just rewiring, it took him a few seconds to get that she was actually licking his come off of herself. He had to give his dick a stern little squeeze to remind it that playtime was over.

“Do you need—”

“I'm okay. Don't worry about it. We should go to sleep,” Allison said, flashing him a quick smile. 

The reminder that, if today had been a day off, then tomorrow they may have to fight whether Stiles felt up for it or not, efficiently doused any leftover arousal he might suffer from.

“Yeah,” Scott said, sounding a little dumbfounded. “Yeah, sleep.”

They spooned for the night, and, even though it wasn't Stiles' turn to be in the middle, Allison and Scott concertedly tugged him down between them and he was too wiped out to protest. Maybe it should have been uncomfortable after what had just happened, but mostly it just felt normal, safe. Once they had settled with Allison at his back and Scott on his front, Stiles leaned in to murmur into Scott's ear, “You're not mad at me, are you?”

Scott reached back, and fumbled a little until he had a firm grasp on Stiles' forearm. “Never,” he said.


	4. Chapter 4

After that first successful message, Lydia crashed hard for twelve hours, and felt groggy the next few days. Fortunately, Deaton had taken it upon himself to pass the name she'd found to Sheriff Stilinski. Four days later, when she finally felt a little rejuvenated, she went to the station to get an update. By now she was a well-known face there, and they let her make her own way to the Sheriff's office. 

She found him sitting at his desk, head in his hands. He hadn't heard her knock so she let herself in and called his name.

He jerked his head, giving her a startled, “Lydia?” that made her suspect he'd been dozing off. His desk was littered with empty coffee cups and sandwich wrappers. Stiles would have a coronary if he could see that. The Sheriff looked like he'd aged years in the span of two months, his face lined and sallow, his eyes shadowed. Chris Argent and Melissa McCall looked the same whenever Lydia saw them.

“Hi, Sheriff. I was coming to see if you had anything about... the name Dr. Deaton gave you.”

“The scientist's name?”

Lydia's heart stuttered—there was nothing in the message about that person being a scientist, unless the fact that the periodic table had been used was part of the message, so... It meant the Sheriff had found something. They had a lead—a lead _Lydia_ had given them.

“Yes,” she said in a short tone.

“Yeah, about that...” Sheriff Stilinski was looking at something over Lydia's shoulder, and she turned to follow his look through the glass panes that allowed the Sheriff to observe what was going on in the station. She narrowed her eyes.

“Is that— _Scott's father_?”

“Yeah, that's Agent McCall,” the Sheriff said, making the words one long sigh.

Lydia knew from Stiles that Scott's father—a FBI agent, apparently—had showed up in Beacon Hills just at the time of the whole debacle with the Nemeton. Neither Stiles nor Scott had looked particularly happy about it. When his son and his friends had been declared missing he'd suddenly split town, to his ex-wife's vocal outrage. Lydia hadn't spared him a thought since then.

“He's been nagging his superiors to take the lead in this investigation,” Sheriff Stilinski said. “Normally the FBI is only directly involved in a kidnapping when the missing person is a child of about 12 or less, although they can offer their assistance in other kidnapping situations.” The Sheriff raked a hand through his short hair. “Which is good, of course, they have means that we don't and anything that can help us find the kids.... He's trying to get me to lose my job and pretends I'm doing a crap job at this investigation, but I don't care about that anymore. I just want to get Stiles, Scott, and Allison back.”

“But Agent McCall doesn't know the whole truth. He's missing half the story,” Lydia completed for him. “At this point, his involvement can hurt our chances to find them as much as it can help.”

“Yeah.” He sighed again. “And one of the things he wants is to talk to you. I tried to avoid that, but now that both of you are in the station, there's no—”

“Then let him,” Lydia said. “I can handle him.”

Sheriff Stilinski sat back in his chair and squinted at her. “Are you sure?”

“I wouldn't say it if I wasn't sure.”

“He doesn't know you're the one who provided us with the name. It's better he doesn't—”

“—because I have no satisfying way to explain how I got it. I know. I'm not stupid.”

Sheriff Stilinski's lips formed something that could pass as a smile. “I know you're not. I had to hear my son wax poetic about your brilliance for years.”

Lydia felt herself blush and cursed her pale skin. “Stiles talks too much for his own good,” she said bitingly.

“No arguing that. Okay, if you're sure, then I'll call him in.”

Lydia hadn't really thought the interview would be _right now_ , but, she reasoned, they might as well get it over with as quickly as possible. Sheriff Stilinski came back in a few minutes later with Agent McCall in tow, and Lydia clasped her purse tight on her lap. 

“Miss Martin,” Agent McCall greeted her, and she greeted him back politely.

Sheriff Stilinski started sitting behind his deck, but Agent McCall stopped him: “You're going to stay here for the interview? No, I don't think so.”

“This is my office.”

“I can take her to one of the interrogation rooms. I don't want you to breathe down my neck and try to influence the witness. She's seventeen. She doesn't need an adult to be present for this.”

“I don't want _you_ trying to intimidate her! If Lydia wants me here—”

The tension was high between the two men, both of them getting a little red in the face, and Lydia felt she had to butt in before the fight got physical. “I'm right _here_!” she snapped, and they both stopped arguing to look at her. “I can speak for myself. I'd rather stay here—” She was doing her best to stay composed, but she'd prefer to avoid the cold, sterile atmosphere of an interrogation room. “—but I don't need you to hold my hand, Sheriff. I'll be fine. Thank you,” she added with a little more warmth. 

“Okay,” the Sheriff said, although from his tone Lydia could tell he thought it was anything but okay. “Okay, I'll just—find something to keep me busy.”

“Yeah, I'm sure there's a cat you can talk down from a tree,” Agent McCall said snidely.

Sheriff Stilinski ignored him. “If you need me, Lydia—” He completed his sentence by looking Lydia straight in the eye, clenching his jaws in a way that conveyed how fast he'd be there if she needed it.

“I know, Sheriff.”

When he'd shut the office glass door behind him, Lydia asked Agent McCall, “Why do you feel the need to put him down like this?”

Agent McCall's mouth curved down. “I think I'll be asking the questions, if you don't mind.”

“I'm listening.”

“You're friends with Scott, Allison, and Stiles, right? All three of them.”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask how that happened?”

She frowned—she hadn't anticipated that kind of question at all. “What do you mean?”

“Let me speak plainly: you're a beautiful, rich, successful girl. The kind of girl who's probably high in the school's hierarchy. I've been to high school too, I know how it works. I don't know Allison Argent, but I know Scott and Stiles. My son... has many qualities, but I know he's never been the popular type. And Stiles Stilinski...”

“Your son has changed a lot since you last saw him,” Lydia said. “So has Stiles. But I'll answer your question: Allison and I have been friends since she came to Beacon Hills during the school year. We immediately clicked. Scott and she dated for a while, so that's how I got to know him and Stiles better. Then I went through some difficult times...”

“What happened at the formal.”

“Yes. People looked at me differently after that. But Scott, Allison, and Stiles were there for me during that period, and that kind of support transcends high school's supposed _hierarchy_.” She emphasized the last word with her eyebrows, trying to convey how ridiculous she thought his argument was.

He remained impassible. “What happened that night, anyway?”

“I don't remember.”

“You went to the formal with Stiles, but it was your ex-boyfriend, Jackson, who found you. What was Stiles doing this whole time?”

“I don't know,” she answered, more or less truthfully—she only had the broadest strokes of what had happened that night.

“Are you dating Stiles?”

“What? No!” A flash of herself kissing Stiles flickered through her mind. “I don't understand what you're aiming at, Agent McCall. I thought you wanted to find Scott and the others.”

“I do. But I need some context to understand what could have happened to them.” He leaned into the space that separated their two chairs, as though sharing a secret with her. “Very _strange_ things have been going on in this town, and your friends seem to be at the center of it way too often to be a coincidence. I just can't put my finger on what it is—something gang-related? Drugs?”

“That's ridiculous. Can you imagine Scott taking _drugs_?”

The thought struck her that all the werewolf shenanigans that had plagued Beacon Hills recently could actually be thought of as gang wars, if looked at from a certain angle, but she pushed back the idea. 

Agent McCall sat back up. “As you told me yourself, my son has changed a lot. I can't pretend I know what he would or would not do.”

Lydia caught a glint of something raw and vulnerable in his eyes when he said that, but it passed in a blink, and it wasn't enough to put a dent into her growing anger.

“And what does it have to do with my dating life?”

“I need to know if you might be lying to protect your boyfriend,” he said bluntly. He was clearly looking to get a rise out of her, but she didn't care anymore because it was working, the fury bubbling in her chest, looking for an outlet.

“Stiles is _not_ my boyfriend,” she bit out, “but he's my friend, and I _would_ protect him if I thought he needed it, just as I would protect Allison or Scott. But I wouldn't lie to protect him if I thought it was putting Scott and Allison in danger. Not that he would want me to—they're his friends, too. Why are you so bent on trying to prove Stiles is somehow responsible for what happened?” she asked pointedly, feeling that attack was the better defense. “What do you have against the Stilinskis? Stiles has been kidnapped too! He's a victim too! You'd rather waste your time on a false lead, just so you have the satisfaction of pinning that on your son's best friend!”

She paused for breath, and also because despite the genuine tears of frustration in her eyes, she was curious to see how Agent McCall was reacting to her words. 

To his credit, he wasn't taking the bait and getting mad in return. His pinched face betrayed displeasure, but he still seemed in control. He gave her an assessing look, as if he had his suspicions about her outburst, and she felt her stomach clench uncomfortably, hoping she hadn't made Stiles look more guilty by protesting his innocence. She'd wanted to add that Stiles would never put Scott and Allison in danger, but it wasn't exactly true. He would never do it on purpose, because he was protective of the people he loved, but he had a way of getting himself into impossible situations, and he didn't always measure the consequences very well. Whatever Stiles, Allison, and Scott had been doing out that night—Lydia suspected it had something to do with Malia Tate, the girl coyote still wandering in the woods—it had very likely been Stiles' idea in the first place. 

“What do you know about Dr. Cara Robinson?” Agent McCall asked, obviously judging that a change of topic was in order.

She'd been waiting for that particular question, and was careful to only let vague interest show on her face. “I know that the Sheriff asked me if I knew that name already, but I didn't. Does she have anything to do with my friends?”

“She's dead.” Lydia's heart sunk at the reveal. “You didn't know that.”

“Of course not. I just told you I didn't know that person.”

“The FBI has been looking into her death. She was working on the DNA, and it looks like some of her work wasn't exactly legal.” He waited a beat, maybe expecting Lydia to ask for clarification. “Human experimentation.”

Lydia didn't have to fake her horror. She felt it swirl inside her belly, cold and slimy, as her mind parsed the implications of what Agent McCall had said: were her friends being _experimented_ on? She knew way too much about science and a thousand of terrible things that could be happening to them assaulted her all at once.

“Are you saying—” Her voice came out squeaky and breathless. “Do you think this has something to do with their kidnapping?”

Her reaction seemed to have softened Agent McCall, because when he answered, he did it in a much less accusatory tone than before: “I don't know. But cases of kidnapping were already being linked to Dr. Cara Robinson's death, so when the name came up in this investigation too—”

“I don't know anything about it,” Lydia said. And it was the truth—all she knew was that Cara Robinson had somehow been involved, and Agent McCall already suspected that much.

He sighed, letting her see for a moment his own weariness. “Okay. Thank you for your time, Miss Martin. Don't leave town in case I have more questions.”

“I'll be here every day, asking if there're any news on my friends. I _want_ to find them, Agent McCall.”

He nodded, but it was absent-minded, like he was thinking about something else already. “We all do.”

\---

It was a sad fact of their new lives that the more fights they won—the more they _killed_ —the better their accommodations became. Scott hadn't missed the fact that they'd acquired their blanket just after his first kill. When they fought a chimera who secreted a poison that had Stiles and Allison puking for two days straight, Scott managed to talk the guards into allowing them more bathroom breaks than their usual two. They were even given water to clean up their cell, which didn't keep it from stinking like vomit for days. With time they got more food, sometimes a bit of real meat, a supplementary blanket, a couple of pillows, disinfectant and clean bandages when they were hurt, and the hours they were taken out of their cell for training were always a blessing. Scott wanted to feel moral disapproval about it, but he could never quell the pleasure he felt at each improvement, not just for himself but also for the smiles they put on Allison and Stiles' faces. If it made them a little more zealous when they fought, well, it was one more thing they avoided talking about. 

He honestly couldn't have said how long it had been since their kidnapping, but one morning after they woke up, Stiles looked at the square of blue sky they could see from the hatch in their cell, and said, “It's been almost four months.”

“Really?” Scott said, surprised. “You kept count?”

“Yeah.”

“Four months...” Allison said in an odd voice. “You think that—you think our parents are still looking for us?”

“A person can be declared dead in absentia after 7 years of being missing,” Stiles droned out. He smiled derisively. “I think we have some time left.”

“Our parents will never give up,” Scott tried to reassure Allison, reaching for her hand. “They'll keep looking for us.”

“Mmm.” Allison didn't look particularly comforted, but she still squeezed Scott's fingers. “Imagine if they have to do this for years. How terrible it has to be, not knowing what happened to us, not even if we're still alive.”

That declaration put the three of them in a gloomy mood as they thought about their respective parents. All of them were single children, raised by single parents. There would be nothing to stop their parents from ruining their lives over trying to find their missing kids. Scott could see his normally cheerful, upbeat mother become drawn and despondent, as real as if it was happening right in front of him. And what about his father? Was he there for his mom, or were they tearing each other apart, fighting over which one of them was responsible for their son's loss? It was unbearable to think about it and not know for sure, to be so utterly helpless. If only he could reach out to his parents, tell them he was alive, that he was fine—for a certain definition of _fine_ , anyway.

Because, on a more selfish note, Scott couldn't help but try to imagine Allison, Stiles, and him living this life for _years_ , and he felt his mind short-circuit from the horror it inspired in him. 

Stiles cleared his throat. “Okay, so that was cheerful. Let's do this again next month.”

Allison snorted her amusement, and they forced the conversation onto a different topic. 

Later that day, they were taken out for a fight. Walking there, feeling the burn of his silver chains, pangs of hunger mixing with nerves and making his stomach flip-flop, Scott was reminded of the first time they'd been led down that way, back when they didn't know what was awaiting them. Four months, if Stiles was right about that, was both such a long and such a short time. It was barely any longer than summer vacations. And yet it was long enough that they'd turned into people capable of things they would never have imagined before. Even being turned into a werewolf didn't feel to Scott like it had changed the core of who he was quite as deeply.

The crowd cheering for them—they were well-known by this point, the audience knew they made for a good show. The blinding lights, the cage. The over-the-top announcement for their fight: “Welcome to our favorite trio: the True Alpha!” Cheers. “The Huntress!” More cheers. “The Mastermind!”

Allison and Stiles exchanged their customary glance of wry mirth at hearing the nicknames they'd acquired a few weeks back. They'd both snickered a lot at the cheesiness involved in their naming. “Who's in charge of this shit?” Stiles had questioned. “Come on, guys, have a little imagination!” Scott hadn't been able to join them in their laughter—he didn't find anything about their situation funny—but at his disapproving look Allison had huffed and said, “If we can't laugh about this, what do we have left?” He'd had nothing to reply to that. 

Their opponents of the day were a pair of short teenagers, a guy and a girl, who looked enough like each other that they might be related, with teeth a lot more pointy than a regular werewolf. A lot sharper too, as Scott soon discovered at his own expense when he felt them bite into his forearm. 

“Avoid the teeth!” he yelled to his teammates after he'd cursed a blue streak from the pain.

“Copy that!” Stiles yelled back. He still had a weirdly-shaped scar from their fight against the two chimeras with little mouths on their hands. Stiles blew on a strand of his hair to get it out of his eyes, looking irritated, and ducked low, narrowly avoiding the claws of the girl he was fighting.

They'd divided the way they usually did: Scott took on one of their opponents on his own, while Stiles and Allison teamed up on the second one and worked on driving him or her crazy. The pair were fast, and even Scott was having some trouble keeping up. His attention was divided between his own fight and his monitoring of Allison and Stiles' heartbeat and breathing, listening for any abnormal increase. At some point he felt a jolt of alarm from Allison and glanced aside, in time to see that she'd lost her knife but that Stiles had just tossed her his, which she caught swiftly. She proceeded to attack her opponent with renewed ardor, giving Stiles the opportunity to do a controlled skid on the ground to get Allison's knife back.

Scott breathed a small sigh of relief, but he felt unbalanced, worried about the exhaustion he could hear in Allison and Stiles' wild heartbeats. He could also smell blood that wasn’t his own and knew that one of his friends, or both, had been hurt too. His opponent took advantage of his distraction several times by cutting him deep with his claws. The cuts bled a lot, and even though they healed quickly, the blood loss accumulated until Scott felt faintly light-headed, and he realized he needed to end that fight sooner rather than later. 

He was gathering all his remaining energy for an assault violent enough to overpower his opponent when his focus was shattered by the sound of Allison's scream. His heart jumped into his throat. He looked to the side and saw that Allison had fallen to her knees, and was trying to make her opponent trip to gain enough time to get back up. Stiles was also picking himself up, bleeding from several cuts on his arms, and didn't look ready to help Allison right away. Without giving it a second thought and forgetting all about his own exhaustion, Scott leaped at her rescue, throwing the chimera off balance and down to the ground. Almost in the same movement he tore the girl's throat with his claws in a spray of warm blood.

He heard a roar of pain and fury behind him: “You _asshole_!”

“Scott! Look out!”

The warning came too late, because immediately Scott felt a weight on his back, an arm coil around his throat, and the burning pain of claws biting into his chest. He folded himself in two, trying to flip his aggressor over him, but all it did was to get the guy's claws buried even deeper into him. He deliberately tumbled to his knees, hoping he could wrestle the chimera off him, and they started tussling on the ground, rolling together in a tangle of limbs and claws and teeth, intermingled with bursts of white-hot pain. Scott's vision was starting to blacken; dimly, he could hear his friends yelling his name with increasing desperation somewhere in the background. 

He found himself on his back, the grimacing face of his opponent filling his entire vision field, and for a moment some of the fog that had started to blur his mind lifted up, letting him see his own death in that hurt, hateful expression. The chimera's face reverted to human, with normal brown eyes and normal teeth, a long straight nose and weirdly thin eyebrows for a guy. It took Scott's breath away to see him look so normal, so much like _him_ , and Stiles, and Allison. He really couldn't _breathe_ —and suddenly pain exploded in his chest and he realized that the not-breathing also came from the chimera digging into his chest, tearing through the skin, crushing the bones in his way. He felt blood gurgle in his throat and tried to cough to get it out of the way, but it only made the pain more excruciating.

The last thing he saw before blacking out was Stiles, a grim-faced Stiles with fiery eyes, stabbing his knife into the chimera's neck. 

“ _Scott!_ ”

\---

They threw Scott's body in the cell like a rag doll before shoving Allison and Stiles inside, foregoing their usual shower. Allison fell to her knees beside Scott, hearing Stiles hammer against the door: “Hey, are you just gonna leave him like this? Where's Miller? I wanna talk to her! Are you listening, you assholes? You gotta give us something to help! He's going to die! Hey, motherfuckers!”

Stiles' shouts dissolved into half sobs, half helpless cries of rage, and it sounded like he was trying to break the door down, having upgraded to kicking at it. Allison tuned him out to focus on Scott: he lay there pale and still, his face human again, and his chest was... Allison breathed through a wave of nausea. The scratches on her arms hurt, but it was a remote sort of hurt, unimportant in the face of Scott's wounds: his chest was a gory mess of blood, torn clothes and flesh, and bones—Allison could see broken ribs poke out like brambles on the forest ground. Could he heal like this? Would he heal wrong unless—unless she—With trembling hands she tried to bring the edges of his wounds closer together and align the bones, but there was so much blood that she couldn't see what she was doing very well, and wasn't even sure where everything was supposed to _go_. The smell of blood was overpowering. She didn't know if she was hurting him because Scott wasn't making a sound, wasn't moving. Wasn't moving _at all_.

Behind her Stiles must have exhausted himself, because he wasn't raging against the door anymore and all Allison could hear from him was him breathing harshly, hissing like an old engine. She leaned down, trying to listen for _Scott_ 's breathing, couldn't hear anything and placed her face in front of his mouth and nose—nothing. She tried to feel for his pulse but her own heart was beating so hard that she wasn't sure what she was feeling.

“Stiles!” she called, her voice quaking. “Stiles, come here, please.”

She heard him move, then he kneeled down on Scott's other side, looking at his friend with wide, tear-filled eyes. “He looks—”

“I'm trying to find his pulse, but I can't—all I can feel is my own heart.”

Stiles pressed his fingers against Scott's neck, hands shaking as much as Allison's, eyes roving over Scott's body. “I can't feel anything,” he said eventually. “Allison.” Now he was looking at her, begging her for God knew what. “I can't feel _anything_.”

“Maybe—are you doing it right?”

“I've seen Scott's mom do it tons of times—yes, I'm doing it right! His heart's just _not beating_.”

“No,” Allison said. “No, no, this isn't happening.” Of the three of them, Scott was the one who was supposed to be near invincible. “He's not dead. He can't be.”

Stiles rubbed a hand over his face. “We've seen—that night at the school, do you remember, when the wolf, Peter, chased us around the school? Scott and I saw Derek get torn apart, and we thought he was dead, but he survived. Scott's an Alpha. Maybe—maybe we just need to wait.”

“Okay,” Allison said, nodding along. “Okay, we can do that. We'll wait.”

So they waited. Both of their clothes were stained with blood, both from their wounds and from Scott’s, and in Stiles' case, from the chimera he'd stabbed in the neck. They had some bandage, gauze, and disinfectant saved from a previous fight and they numbly patched each other up. Allison tried not to dwell on the fact that Scott was usually the one who did that for them. The one who always got out of a fight intact. Once they were done they huddled together in a corner of the room, wrapped in one of their blankets. Together they watched Scott's unmoving body until there was barely enough light left for them to see anything.

“If he dies,” Stiles said darkly at some point, “I'll kill them. I don't even care. I swear to God, I will kill them all.”

Or die trying—but Allison agreed with the sentiment, and she nodded against his shoulder. Killing was all they were good for anymore. She was _exhausted_. She had been physically exhausted for weeks, months, but this was something more. This was a mental exhaustion that drained her of her will to keep going. What were they fighting for, anyway? Why were they killing all those kids? Saving time until they were rescued, or until one of Stiles' escape plans worked out? Was their survival really worth the price? Besides, if Scott died, survival didn't seem like such an enviable option.

“I'm sorry,” Stiles murmured against Allison's hair, startling her out of her thoughts.

“What for?”

“I don't know. For not being the one lying there, I guess?”

Allison straightened up and elbowed him sharply in the ribs.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“For being stupid!” Allison whispered furiously. “If you were the one lying there, then there would be no hope for you to still be alive. You'd be dead for sure! Scott and I would be watching over your dead body!”

He looked at her, mouth open like a fish out of the water. “Yes, but—”

He was interrupted by a gasp, the desperate sound of someone fighting for breath.

“Scott?” Stiles said.

Scott's body was moving with halted jerks, like he was trying to sit up but was too weak for it.

“Oh my god, Scott!” Allison exclaimed, and she scrambled to his side.

His eyes were wide open and panicked, his mouth gaping like he was trying to speak or maybe just breathe, but couldn't quite make sense of it. Allison clutched at his hand, feeling it tremble in hers, and when his eyes latched onto her he became less frantic.

“Alli—Allison,” he croaked.

“Yes, it's me, Scott. I'm here, I'm here with you. You're going to be just fine.”

“Stiles? Where—”

“I'm right here, Scotty.”

Stiles wasn't trying to touch Scott, though. The back of his hand was pressed against his mouth like he was trying not to puke.

“What—what,” Scott stammered.

“You were hurt,” Allison explained, lifting a quivering hand to stroke his hair. “You were hurt really badly and we thought—Stiles and I thought that you were—We thought you were dead.” 

She was crying, now. There was no keeping the tears in, and ugly sobs were shaking her frame, tearing her chest from the inside out. She felt a warm touch against her cheek and it was Scott, stroking her face. He was trying to smile, saying, “I'm okay now,” even though he looked barely a level above dead. “Don't cry, please.”

It only made Allison cry harder and she cupped the back of his head to draw him in, bringing her lips to his. His mouth felt achingly familiar, and the way he responded to her, both sweet and eager, this was familiar too, felt like coming home. He hadn't had as much facial hair before, so the scratchy feeling was new, but not in a bad way. She pressed a series of hurried, nibbling kisses to his lips, trying to make up for lost time, and tasted the salt of her tears mixed with metal from his blood. His hair was now even longer than when she'd first met him, and she buried her hand in his thick curls, knitting her fingers into them. She'd missed this, missed having him like this—why had she ever stopped? 

When she started to get out of breath she pushed them apart, and for a few seconds she and Scott looked at each other with short-winded chuckles, like they'd just found each other again by chance after years of being out of touch and couldn't believe their luck. Then Scott tried to twist out of her grasp, calling for Stiles.

Stiles shuffled closer and said, “Yeah, I'm here. I guess congratulations are in order. “

“Hey.” Allison moved away so Scott could sit up fully. “Hey. Are you okay?” Scott asked Stiles, who was picking at one of the bandages on his arm.

Stiles made a choked off sound. “Am _I_ —? Jesus, Scott. You're the one who—” He gestured at Scott's bloody front. “Christ.”

“Not anymore. See?” Scott ripped a bit more of his t-shirt and wiped away some of the blood so they could see the flawless skin underneath.

“Okay, okay,” Stiles said, looking away like he couldn't stand the sight of the blood. Allison felt a bit queasy herself. “Point taken.”

“Hey, look at me.” Scott gently pressed a hand to the side of Stiles' face to force his friend to look back at him. “I'm fine.”

“See, my eyes can confirm that, and my head knows it, but I just—”

Scott grabbed Stiles' hand and spread it on his chest. “Feel that? That's my heart. _Beating_.”

“It wasn't beating earlier,” Stiles said feebly.

Allison rested her hand next to Stiles' so she could feel it too, the steady, strong pound of Scott's heart, anchoring him to life.

“I'm _fine_ ,” Scott repeated, inching closer to Stiles. 

Stiles looked at him, breathing heavily, and, without warning, caught the back of Scott's neck to pull his friend in, and kissed him. At first he simply smashed their mouths together without finesse, like he was in a hurry to feel him, then he drew back a little and gave Scott another softer, more tentative kiss, pinching Scott's lower lip. One of Allison's hands was still on Scott's chest and her arm found itself squashed between the boys in the process, so that she could feel both of their heartbeats ratchet up.

When Stiles let him go, Scott blinked slowly and said, “Okay. So. That happened.”

“God, dude, I'm sorry, I just—”

“No, no, it's fine. I'm glad—” Scott took the hand Stiles had over his heart and gave it a squeeze. “Glad to be alive, I guess.”

“Allison,” Stiles said, wriggling his hand out of Scott's grip and turning to Allison. They were sitting so close to each other that his knees bumped into hers. “Allison, I don't know what got into me—”

“Stiles, sshh.” Allison raised a hand to cup Stiles' jaw. “It's okay. We're alive, right?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, his voice scraping a bit on the word. “We _are_ alive.”

Allison hooked her arms around both Scott and Stiles' necks, leaning into them, breathing in the smell of blood and sweat that had become their daily lot. It shouldn't have felt this good to be alive, not with all they had to do to stay this way, but she couldn't bring herself to worry about it right now. Stiles and Scott's hearts were thumping in unison with hers, and each beat pumped new life into her.


	5. Chapter 5

“ _Scott!_ ”

Lydia woke up screaming. Bathed in sweat, hands clenching her bedcover, she became slowly aware she was sat up in her bed, her ears still ringing from her own cry. She slid off the bed, thrusting her feet into the slippers on the floor by it, and shrugged on her robe.

“Lydia? Lydia, are you alright?”

Lydia ignored her mother's calls that followed her down the stairs. She needed to go. She _needed_ to get there. She was barely aware of anything beyond that burning, all-encompassing urge. Her mother called again but Lydia closed the front door behind her as she exited the house, effectively shutting her mom down. Blood pounded in her temples, and each of her breaths was so noisy that it was like the sound was broadcast on loudspeakers.

 _Turn left_ , the synthetic voice of her GPS said.

“ _Lydia!_ ”

Lydia started, violently thrown back into herself like a snapped rubber band. She was in her car, still wearing only her night gear. She was cold, her fingertips getting numb, and her throat felt raw, the way it did after one of her banshee cries. The halos of her car's lights shrouded her mother, who was standing in front of Lydia's car, both of her hands on the hood. It was her call that had broken through Lydia's trance.

Lydia turned the engine off, unbuckled her seat belt—she didn't even remember hooking it in the first place—and got out of the car. 

“Lydia!” Her mother engulfed her in a hug, and Lydia let herself melt into it for a second. “What happened? I heard you scream. Did you have a nightmare? Where were you _going_?”

“I need to call the Sheriff,” Lydia said. “I need to call everyone.”

“Call—Lydia, it's the middle of the night!”

“I think I know where to find Scott, Stiles, and Allison.”

“What— _how_?”

Lydia gently untangled herself from her mother's arms and went back into her house. With each passing second she felt more lucid, her mind clearing from the fog caused by sleep and her banshee trance. Something had happened, that much was sure, and whatever it was had opened wide her connection to her missing friends. She had no doubt that they'd been her destination, but for the first time she'd been able to stop herself before she was led there, and although she wanted nothing more than to go to them, she knew she couldn't get there on her own. 

Her mother kept pestering her for answers Lydia couldn't give, obviously convinced that her daughter was having a mental breakdown. After Lydia had called all the relevant people and said that she had to go to Sheriff Stilinski's house for an emergency meeting, her mother tried to put her foot down.

“It's the middle of the night. You're not going anywhere.”

“Mom, give me my keys back,” Lydia asked impatiently, pointing at the hand her mother clenched around her car keys. 

“You're not in any condition to drive! Lydia.” Her mother's voice softened and her expression became compassionate. “I know how hard these past few months have been for you. That whole year has been one disaster after another. Anyone would crack after what you've been through.”

Lydia felt her whole body tense. “I'm not crazy.”

“That's not what I'm saying, honey, but you have to admit that you're not in your right mind either. If you remembered something that can help find your friends, then we'll go to the police station first thing tomorrow, and—”

“No.”

Lydia's very firm tone seemed to take her mother by surprise, and she cut herself mid-sentence and blinked. “Lydia, sweetie, you're not—”

“No, mom. I'm sorry, but this can't wait until tomorrow morning. Each minute counts.” Her mother opened her mouth again to speak, and Lydia took her hand. “I'm sorry, mom, I know how crazy this must seem to you, and I wish I could explain—I wish I had the time and the adequate circumstances to make you understand. But I can save my friends—I _will_ save them, and I'm not asking for your permission. If you take my car key, I will walk there. If you lock me into my room, I will climb out of the window.”

Her room was on the second floor, and there was no convenient tree nearby or creeping plant to help her get down, but her determination must have shone bright enough to get through her mother. She pulled her hand away, her lips tight with unhappiness.

“Are you going to go dressed like this?” she asked in a controlled voice.

Lydia looked down on herself, her slippers and her nightgown and robe. She could see how she wasn't inspiring confidence in her mental health.

“I'll go get dressed,” she said evenly, and walked past her mother with her head high, refusing to show any hint of embarrassment. 

Two hours later, Lydia was dressed in a collared sweater, skater skirt, and high socks, and sitting on Sheriff Stilinski's couch. She was sandwiched between Derek and Melissa McCall, watching the Sheriff pace his living room. Ethan and Aiden had showed in Derek's tow and were standing together in one corner of the room while Chris Argent stood in an opposite corner, scowling in their general direction. He was apparently okay with Derek, now, but the twins obviously had some way to go before they were considered with the same grudging tolerance. Aiden looked at Lydia like he wanted to come and talk to her, but she gave him a warning glance and he stayed where he was, grumbling a little to his brother in low tones.

Deaton came back from the kitchen, where he'd been doing who knows what—maybe preparing a potion that would improve Lydia's focus. God knew she would need all the help she could get.

“And you know where to find them?” the Sheriff said.

“No, not exactly,” Lydia said with all the patience she could muster.

She'd explained her powers to the Sheriff before, but it never seemed to stick. His agitation reminded her keenly of Stiles and his inability to stay still. The thought hurt, but it also helped keep her annoyance at bay: for every ounce of pain she felt at Stiles' absence, the Sheriff had to feel it tenfold. 

“I can't tell you a location—it doesn't work that way—but I can get you there. It's like a—a _pull_ at the back of my mind. If I give into it I know that it'll lead me to them.”

“But why couldn't you do that before?”

Lydia felt her heart freeze in her chest. She'd been all purpose since she'd woken up from her trance and realized she was being led to her friends' location, and any other considerations had been pushed aside, but with the Sheriff's question all her fears and worries started pushing back.

“Something happened, didn't it?” Deaton asked. His face was perfectly blank as ever, but his eyes were perceptive. “Did one of them—”

“No,” Lydia cut him in, but Mrs. McCall whipped her head up, alarm on her face. 

“Wait, aren't Lydia's powers linked to death?” she asked. “Does it mean that—that one of the kids _died_?”

“I don't think so,” Lydia said. “I did scream, but—” She'd screamed a name, that much she knew, but she didn't remember which one. “I'm not feeling it anymore, the, the _urgency_ to get to the dead body. So I don't think that one of them died—just, one of them was probably pretty close to death, and that allowed me to tap into my power.”

“But you're not sure.” Chris Argent's deep voice held no trace of emotion.

Lydia pinched her lips. “No, I'm not sure.”

“Even then,” Mrs. McCall said, “you said that one of them was close to death. Do you mean that they're hurt? Dying?”

“I don't know.”

“If it's Scott, then he's probably okay by now,” Derek said, angled toward Mrs. McCall like he wanted to reach out and comfort her, but didn't dare it. “Anything that doesn't kill an Alpha on the spot will eventually heal.”

But it wasn't the case for Allison and Stiles, and Derek seemed to belatedly realize that, his eyes flinging to the Sheriff and Mr. Argent. 

“We need to act fast, then,” Deaton said.

“Yes, I'm aware of that,” Lydia said frostily. “This is why I called all of you in the middle of the night. I wouldn't have stopped myself, but I know that whoever is holding them, I can't face them on my own.”

“I can get us weapons,” Mr. Argent said. “But we still run the risk of being outnumbered, because we have no idea how many of them there are. They probably don't lack men or weapons. Even with a few werewolves on our side, we may fail in our attempt, and then Allison, Scott, and Stiles may get killed in the assault or in retaliation.”

“We need Rafe,” Mrs. McCall said suddenly. “We need the FBI's help—they can get the local police to cooperate.”

The Sheriff stopped pacing. “You're right,” he said with a grimace, like the admission pained him. “I can't help with that. By now we've established that they're not in the county, and anywhere else is outside my jurisdiction.”

“I don't know,” Lydia said doubtfully. “If we tell him I know where they are, he's just going to ask me for a location. He's not going to understand when I say I can only take them to the right place.”

“Then we just tell him everything,” Mrs. McCall said.

“I don't know Agent McCall very well, but he doesn't strike me as the type to believe me when I tell him that I know what I know because of my banshee powers.” Stiles seemed to think that Scott's father was a total dick, and Lydia had to acknowledge that her friend was a good, if a bit intransigent, judge of character, but Lydia wasn't about to voice that to his ex-wife. “He'll think that I'm crazy, and dismiss anything I have to say.”

“Then we just have to prove it to him.” Mrs. McCall turned to Derek. “If you show him—like, the claws and the fangs, and the whole—” She gestured at her own face, curling her lips in a fake growl. “—werewolf thing, then he'll have no choice but to believe us.”

Derek looked reluctant. “I'm not sure I like the idea of the FBI knowing about us...”

“We'll tell Rafe to keep it quiet. Scott's still his son—we'll tell him his safety's at stake.”

“We can explain to him what the consequences would be if he tells a soul about us,” Aiden said, flashing his claws.

His brother cuffed the back of his head. “This is Scott's _father_ , dumbass. Do you think he'll want us in his pack if we hurt his father? Think a little!”

“I don't mean we hurt him, but we could just—”

Derek raised a hand to cut Aiden off. “No one's going to hurt or threaten Agent McCall. But Melissa's right: we need his help. So I guess we'll just—have to take that risk.”

He obviously wasn't happy about it, but Mrs. McCall gave him a grateful smile and he smiled back, a little hesitantly. It was decided that they shouldn't waste any more time, and should call Agent McCall right away. At some point Lydia dozed off a little and missed the call itself, and when Mrs. McCall gently shook her awake, the sky had turned a pale gray and the time on the Stilinskis' DVD player read 5:56.

Agent McCall was there, his hair a mess and his suit rumpled like he had slept in it—or maybe not slept at all. For the first time Lydia thought about his relation to Scott as something more than an abstract piece of information: he _was_ Scott's father, and even though from what she'd heard he wouldn't win any title for father of the year, he was probably going slowly crazy just like the rest of them.

“What's going on?” he snapped. He was addressing his ex-wife, mostly ignoring the other people in the room as though they were of no consequence. “You said it had to do with Scott.”

Mrs. McCall put a hand on his shoulder. “Rafe, sit down.”

Agent McCall resisted a little, demanding explanations right away or he would leave, but Mrs. McCall eventually wore him down. 

“We think we might know where Scott and the others are,” she explained once he was sitting. 

“Then we need—”

Mrs. McCall stopped her ex-husband from rising from his seat. “We have to tell you a few things before we do this.”

She gave him an abridged version of everything that had happened since that fateful night when Stiles dragged Scott to the woods looking for a dead body. She glossed over the whole Hale-Argent feud and her own kidnapping alongside Sheriff Stilinski and Chris Argent, but managed to convey the reality of Beacon Hills as a supernatural hotbed. Derek showed his claws and flashed his eyes to support her point, and so did the twins—a little threateningly on Aiden's part despite what he'd been told earlier.

“This is crazy,” Agent McCall said, standing up as though to walk away. “I don't know what's going on or what you want, but—”

“Rafe, wait!” Mrs. McCall grabbed his arm and stopped him in his tracks. “We're telling the truth, you know we are. Everything that happened in Beacon Hills, every strange, inexplicable case, the details that don't add up—this is it, this is how it all makes sense!”

“This makes _no_ sense at all!” Agent McCall roared, tearing himself away from his ex-wife's grasp and spinning around to face her. 

“How do you explain what you saw, then?” she answered in kind, waving her hand at Derek and the twins. 

“This is some kind of trick, this—” For some reason, he turned to the Sheriff. “Is this how you're trying to cover for your blunders? Are you that desperate to hide your gross incompetence?”

The Sheriff exploded, going up into Agent McCall's space. “How _dare_ you? My son is _missing_ and—”

“So is my son! And _your_ son seems to be somehow at the origin of whatever this is—”

“Oh, of course, you believe that part!”

“Yes, _that_ part is the only thing that sounds likely in this whole crazy, ridiculous story! Every time Scott's been in trouble, Stiles was behind it. If only you managed to control your loudmouth, hyperactive—”

Lydia winced when Sheriff Stilinski threw a punch and sent Agent McCall flying into his ex-wife's arms. 

“Okay, okay, calm down, tough guy,” Melissa McCall said as she circled her arms around his waist, keeping him from jumping in retaliation at the Sheriff, who was similarly restrained by Mr. Argent.

“Rafe, listen to me,” Mrs. McCall said, holding his chin to force him to look at her. “Everything I told you is the truth. I _saw_ it with my own eyes, okay? I saw Scott with claws and fangs and glowing eyes. I saw that and more. Our son is a werewolf. This is the truth, so deal with it. Do you think I would try to trick you when our son's life is at stake?”

Agent McCall stopped struggling against her hold, going still. “No,” he said after a moment.

“Okay, now sit back down, and listen to what Lydia has to tell you.”

Agent McCall flopped into an armchair and looked up at Lydia, his brow furrowed in a way that made him look startlingly like Scott. Then his surprise turned into suspicion, and this was more reminiscent of Stiles, ironically. “What does Lydia have to do with this?”

Lydia stood up, smoothing the wrinkles on her skirt. “Well, Agent McCall, now that we've established the existence of werewolves, let's start on chapter two. I'm a banshee—a harbinger of death.”

\---

Scott watched as Stiles paced up and down the length of their cell. He was sitting with his back against the wall, trying not to betray to Stiles and Allison how he much he needed the support, not yet fully recovered from yesterday's ordeal. He'd slept like the dead and yet he was exhausted, and his chest still ached faintly—although this might have only been some form of phantom pain. He'd never been hurt quite that bad before. On one hand it was sort of reassuring to know that he was indeed hard as hell to kill, but on the other hand he _had_ come very close to dying. His memories of the fight were hazy and disjointed except for one thing: the stern certainty that he was living through his last moments. Just thinking about it had a chill run up his spine, and he shivered, tugging at his shirt sleeves for warmth—at some point the guards had come to check whether he was alive, and all three of them had been given a change of clothing. The cell still stunk of blood, at least to Scott's sensitive nose, even though they'd covered the dark stain on the floor with one of their blankets.

“Okay,” Stiles was saying, “so I'm still pretty sure your heart was _not_ beating when we tried to feel for your pulse.”

“Do we have to talk about it?” Allison said with an unhappy little grimace. “All that matters is that Scott's alive, right?”

She looked cold, hugging herself tightly; or maybe it was just the effect the reminder of Scott almost dying had on her. Scott wanted to hold her in his arms, but to do so would involve getting up and he wasn't sure he could do it without falling on his face. They hadn't discussed what had happened between them after Scott had woken up, but Scott was kind of okay with that. In real life, being kissed your ex girlfriend and your best friend within a few minutes of each other was probably the sort of event that needed talking over, but he felt that normal rules didn't apply to their situation anymore. They were living in limbo, and they had no other anchor than each other to get through it. The status quo would have to keep.

“Hey, Scott, you listening?” Stiles had stopped pacing and snapped his fingers impatiently at Scott.

“Uh? Yeah, sorry. What were you saying?”

“Your heartbeat. Either your heart stopped beating and then restarted, _or_ it was just beating so slowly we couldn't feel it. Either way, it was doing something a human heart is incapable of doing, at least not to that extent.”

“Well, he's an Alpha werewolf,” Allison said. “I'm still failing to see how—”

“But what if he could learn to do it on purpose?”

“Okay,” Scott said, loyally trying to focus even though he still couldn't see Stiles' point. But Stiles was all fired up in a way he hadn't been in a long time, and Scott would have done just about anything to keep him acting more like his old self.

“There are techniques you can use to lower your heart rate,” Stiles went on. “And normally it has its limits because your system isn't going to allow you to ignore physiological norms to the point where it would be damaging to you—but you have a different threshold than normal human beings. If you could make your heart go slow enough, maybe you could pass for dead.”

Scott furrowed his brow. “Why would I do that?” he asked, still confused but trusting that Stiles would eventually provide him with an explanation.

“I'm—still working on that part of the plan, but—they have to do something with the bodies, right? All the—” His voice became faint and he didn't utter the words they probably were all thinking: _all the people we killed_. “Anyway, maybe they bury them, or, more likely, they incinerate them, but they probably don't guard the bodies as tightly as they do us, so that's a shot at escaping for you.”

“For me?”

“Yeah, if you can escape then maybe you can—”

“Not without you.”

“What?”

Scott sat straighter, trying to pin Stiles with his glare. “I'm not going _anywhere_ without you.”

Stiles swallowed hard, Adam's apple bobbing up and down, and Scott thought again about the kiss between them the day before, the way his mouth had felt against Scott's. Was Stiles attracted to him? Scott had suspected that much for a while, at least a little bit, but then Stiles was widely and randomly attracted to all kinds of people, so it had never felt like much of an issue for their friendship. Was Scott attracted to Stiles? He loved him, of course—that was never in question. But _attraction_.... It didn't feel the way it did with Allison, when every cell in his body lit up just as the sight of her, but Scott couldn't deny that there was a new sort of—awareness, maybe? Stiles had become his anchor just as much as Allison, and it was a new way for them to connect, to tangle themselves in each other until there was no more risk for any of them to drift away.

“No one's going anywhere,” Allison said. “If only one of us escape, then they'll just move the other two to another location. Or kill them. But there's some merit to Stiles' idea.”

“ _Thank_ you!”

Allison came to sit next to Scott, resting a warm hand on his knee. “If you can learn to control this, then it could come in handy at one point.”

“Okay,” Scott said. If both Stiles' and Allison's minds were set on this, then there was no fighting it. “How am I supposed to do that?”

It so happened that Stiles had once read all about it on the Internet—because of course he had—and that it involved lying down with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and thinking calming thoughts. The first attempt ended up with Scott promptly falling asleep. On the second try, Stiles made him keep track of his own pulse with two fingers on his neck, while Allison monitored him by holding his other arm.

“You need to be aware of your breathing,” Stiles instructed him, in a low-pitched voice that Scott found so incredibly soothing that he almost fell asleep again. “Feel the air enter your nostrils. Feel it fill your lungs.”

They worked at it for a little longer, and even if Scott couldn't manage to lower his heart rate enough to pass for dead, he had to admit that the exercise had its benefits: for one, it had the merit of giving Stiles some task to focus on, which was always an upside; and for two, it left Scott feeling a lot more centered than before, and even a bit regenerated. He would have asked Stiles if he thought the meditation could be helping with his healing, but it would mean admitting how much of a toll his injuries had taken on him, so instead he kept that thought for further examination. 

They were left alone for the next few days, taken out only for a few irregular hours of training. This suited Scott perfectly, even though it meant that Stiles climbing up the walls threatened once again to drive all of them crazy. They exercised, trained when they were given the occasion, practiced meditation until Scott got the hang of heart rate control, played games and told each other stories. 

About two days after Scott had almost died he was trying to fall asleep between Stiles and Allison, their blanket wrapped around the three of them, when Allison, whose back he'd been spooning, shifted in his arms and turned to face him. She curled against his chest, wedging her head under his chin, and simply breathed against the crook of his neck.

“You can't sleep?” he murmured to the top of her head. He loved the feel of her hair on his face. 

“Mmmh,” she hummed, and left him to parse whether it meant yes or no.

Her breath felt warm and wet against the sensitive skin of his throat. He wrapped his arms tighter around her, enjoying having her in his arms like this. For all that they slept snuggled together each night, this felt more intimate somehow. This felt nice. _Very_ nice—with a touch of embarrassment he could feel that the all-around niceness of their position had woken up his dick, and he tried to move his hips away from her without breaking their embrace. Stiles and Scott had both had morning woods in the past, there wasn't much they could do about that, and they'd dealt with it by not mentioning it until it became something else they got used to, the same way they’d dealt with the awkwardness of Allison’s periods. This was different, though. This had _intent_. Despite what had happened between them two days before, Scott didn't want to put Allison in a potentially uncomfortable situation.

But unfortunately he didn't have much room to move, and all he did was bump into Stiles at his back. Stiles groaned, and Allison stirred in his arms.

“ _Scott_ ,” she murmured, reproach and amusement mixing in her voice. 

“Sorry,” he replied in the same tone. “I can—do you want me to turn around?”

“No.” One of her hands slid up to press against his face, warm from their combined body heats. “It's okay.”

Her other hand was sliding _down_ , and he gasped when she cupped his swollen dick. She started kissing him, slow and languid, rubbing him at the same time, and after a moment he felt confident enough to palm her breasts through her shirt. This was familiar, known territory, and yet it also felt new and exciting to be able to rediscover her, as thrilling as their first time.

She slipped her hand into his pants and when he felt her hand on him, skin against skin, he bucked back against Stiles and felt then that his friend was hard too.

“Uh,” Stiles said, half-rising. “I'm sorry, don't mind me, I should—”

“No, don't.” Suddenly the notion of Stiles moving away, even though he couldn't go very far, was unbearable to Scott. He twisted around, as much as he could with Allison clutching his shirt and her hand down his pants, and reached out for Stiles.

“Oh, uh.” Scott's hand caught the edge of Stiles' collar, and he tugged at it until Stiles lay back down. “Okay, then,” Stiles said.

Scott flung an arm over his friend, wanting to keep him close. Allison was still jerking him off, pressing small kisses to the angle of his jaw, but without trying to reclaim his full attention. Scott was panting from her ministrations, his forehead almost touching Stiles', their breaths mingling. He could hear Stiles' heart jackrabbit in his chest, could smell his arousal, feel the heat emanating from his flushed cheeks even if he couldn't see it. Feeling curious and daring, Scott leaned closer, pressing his mouth against his friend's. Stiles made a sound, and Scott kissed him again. He turned completely so as to face Stiles, and Allison rearranged herself to be draped over his back, her free hand roaming all over his body, and then bypassing him and running along Stiles' side.

“Okay, uh, soooo,” Stiles whispered, as if he was worried someone would overhear them. Each of his words sent a puff of air against Scott's lips. “We're having a threeway, right? That's what we're doing?”

Scott chuckled. Stuck between Stiles and Allison, he was filled with such contentment that he couldn't make himself worry about the implication of what he was doing. He got his hand down Stiles' pants just to have the pleasure of his friend's startled reactions, his strangled moan and his hand clawing clumsily at Scott's shoulder. Jerking Stiles off was an odd experience for Scott, who was unused to the sensation of having another person’s dick in his hand. With the way they were pressed against each other he didn't have much room to pump his hand so he merely gave little strokes, enjoying each and every one of Stiles' gasps and stifled groans. He wasn't sure how much of his own arousal was caused by Allison and her nimble fingers, and how much was Stiles, but there was something so simple, so powerfully _immediate_ about making his best friend feel good. He felt something wet on his ear—it was Allison's mouth, and he turned back to her so he could kiss her again, then helped her climb over him so she could settle between Stiles and him. She hissed in pain when she landed on one of the wounds on her arms, and Scott kissed the nape of her neck to soothe the hurt.

“Hey,” Stiles told her.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, and kissed him. 

They made out a little longer, taking turns at getting each other off with their hands until all of them had come, one after the other.

It happened a couple more times—it was always furtive and hurried, and they never took any clothes off, but it was still good, very grounding. Scott wasn't thinking about the fights when they did this—blood and guilt mixing sourly at the bottom of his stomach—or letting himself get dragged down by the darkness around his heart. This was as close to happiness as he ever hoped to feel again. 

The price to pay for their relative peace was that with each new morning, the dread of having to fight again grew in Scott. His brush with death had taught him one truth about himself: he didn't want to die. This wasn't just about protecting Stiles and Allison; he wanted to survive, and knew he would kill again to live another day. That realization was hard to swallow, because as long as he'd been able to pretend that he fought to protect his friends, he had plausible deniability. He'd liked to tell himself that if he were the only one involved, he would just lie down and die rather than kill some kid his age who probably didn't have any more choice about this than he did. Now he couldn't, and it gave him surges of self-loathing that he tried to hide from Allison and Stiles.

The break went on for two more days. Scott liked to think, in what was probably an unreasonable burst of optimism, that the powers that be were giving him some time to mend, but Stiles' growing anxiety was infectious and it was hard to cling to his positive thinking.

“Something's going on,” Stiles said, scratching at one of the scabbing cuts on his arm. “We haven't seen Miller in a while, too. I don't know, I don't like this.”

The enforced inaction of the past few days hadn't been easy on him, and he looked tired and drawn, twitchy in a way that bordered on desperate.

“Maybe they're laying low,” Allison suggested. She was holding Stiles' wrist, idly rubbing her thumb over his pulse point, and the contact seemed to help him relax. “Maybe someone's onto them. I mean, organizing that kind of fights is bound to draw attention.”

They exchanged a round of looks: none of them could bring themselves to say out loud who exactly they thought that 'someone' could be for fear of jinxing it.

“Mmm, maybe,” Stiles said, looking doubtful.

“What else could be going on?” Scott asked. He knew his friend preferred to consider worst-case scenarios rather than be disappointed, but Scott badly wanted things to go well for them for once. “I agree with Allison—this sounds like the most likely explanation.”

“Yeah, no, I'm not saying it's impossible, it's just that I'm seeing another possibility.” Stiles raised his head to meet their eyes. “Maybe they're getting ready for something bigger than what they've done so far: like, I don't know, some big free-for-all fighting, or a hunt in the woods, or something Battle Royal style.”

Scott felt his insides twist at the implications of Stiles' words. He heard Allison ask, “What's 'Battle Royal'?” but his ears were ringing too much for him to listen to Stiles' explanation. Only one of them, at best, would survive—that was what was implied by all of Stiles' scenarios, and Scott hated him a little for bringing up that possibility. They'd always been allowed to fight as a team so far, and Scott had never stopped to think about what a blessing it was. He hadn't realized that things could get worse, so much worse than they already were. If they were forced to turn against each other.... _My god, please. Don't let Stiles be right._

“Scott? Hey, you in there?”

Scott jumped at the sound of Stiles' voice. “Yeah, sorry. I—really hope you're wrong about this.”

“You and me both, buddy.”

The next day, they were taken out of their cell, chained and blindfolded, and put on a van. Scott hadn't been raised to be overly religious, and still, the whole trip to their destination, he didn't stop praying for one moment.

\---

After the van had stopped, they were left inside for what felt like hours, waiting. Stiles' usual restlessness was coupled with his anxiety over what was going to happen, and his leg was twitching uncontrollably, making the chain that linked the shackles on his wrists and feet jiggle. Sad to say, but the last few months had gotten them used to a sort of routine: when they were brought to a new location, they were sent to the cell awaiting them and only fought the next morning. This time the routine was disturbed and Stiles didn't like it one bit. Since he didn't foresee things getting easier for them anytime soon, change could only be for the worse. The fact that they were still blindfolded, depriving Stiles of the stimulation usually provided by sight, made it even worse, and he was this close to losing it.

“For god's sake, Stiles, stop it with that noise!” Allison snapped, making him jump.

Stiles open his mouth to protest—Allison knew how hard it was for him to stay still, and that it wasn't always possible for him to keep it down—but he heard the tense note in her voice and remained silent. She was just as nervous as he was, and if they started arguing now there was a risk it would affect their teamwork on the field.

“What do you think's going on?” Scott said.

Stiles cursed his friend's need to voice out his fears. He didn't want to say what he was really thinking for fear of making it true, but it was impossible to lie to Scott.

“Nothing good,” Allison said in his place.

“God, I _hate_ this waiting,” Stiles complained, unable to hold it anymore. “I'd really rather be out there fighting.”

“Don't say that,” Scott said in a strained voice. “Anything's better than having to kill again.”

Stiles bit his tongue on his retort, feeling something that might have been shame burn inside his chest. How Scott, even after everything, could still be so damn _good_ confounded Stiles—although maybe not that much. This was exactly what made him Scott McCall, True Alpha extraordinaire. How long before Scott got disgusted by the way Stiles had embraced their new life and let—no, not let him get killed, Scott would never do that, but became indifferent to him living or dying?

The door at the back of the van squeaked and cooler air wafted inside, bringing noises with it, voices, and something like a roar. They were dragged out of the van and pushed along, tripping over their chains. The air smelled like forest ground and Stiles could feel the sun on his skin for the first time in months, his face instinctively turning to it. The roar he had perceived when he got out of the van progressively became more distinct, until it exploded suddenly.

“Is that a crowd?” Allison whispered.

It sounded exactly like a crowd welcoming their favorite band. Their fights had always happened in front of an excited and bloodthirsty audience, but from the sound of it there were way more people than they were used to.

“What the hell—” he murmured, his stomach clenching in apprehension.

They were unchained, and Stiles rubbed at his raw wrists while someone relieved him of his blindfold. Light dazzled him and he had to blink a few times before he could make sense of the blurry spots of colors he could see.

“Oh, god.”

The breathed out curse had come from Scott, but Stiles was too taken by the scene in front of him to look in his friend's direction: they were standing in an honest-to-god stadium, small by stadium standards, but still a larger stretch of ground than he'd seen in months. Faced with that much space, Stiles felt almost dizzy from it, and it wasn't helped by all the fresh air they were getting after being locked up for so long. The benches looked dark with people, although it was hard to see much because of the blinding white light coming from the floodlights posted at each corner of the stadium. The crowd's cries were a living, breathing thing, and Stiles could feel the way it made the air around them vibrate. Where the hell did all those people come from?

“Look,” Allison hissed, tugging on his sleeve, pointing to the other end of the field, where men were moving out bodies. “There was another fight just now.”

It made sense that theirs wouldn't be the only fights, but they'd never seen any evidence of it before. Stiles' brain worked feverishly as he tried to figure out how to make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. 

Allison and Stiles were given knives as usual, and the three of them were led to the center of the field. The crowd's excitement went up a notch, and Stiles noticed at that moment that a screen was set on one end of the stadium, and that it broadcast an oversized, HD image of the three of them. The camera did a close up on each of them and Stiles looked at his own haggard face like it was the face of a stranger: he looked sharper than before, older somehow, and there were bruises on his face that he didn't even remember getting. His hair was too long and his beard had the aspect of some untreated skin disease. He looked like a hobo and a fucking _junkie_.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” The voice was familiar, but it boomed above them like God's own voice, coming from everywhere and anywhere at once. “This is going to be our last fight—” The crowd booed, but the voice went on blithely, “—last but not least! Some of you may have already recognized them, but for our newcomers, let me introduce our trio: the True Alpha! The most ferocious werewolf this side of the Atlantic, his power is beyond measure!”

Stiles exchanged a look with Allison, and they both rolled their eyes in unison—the description had really escalated since the first time they'd gotten nicknames, and this was so remote from the Scott McCall they both knew as to become laughable. Underneath his amusement, though, Stiles' discomfort was only growing. The way they were building up this fight, the fact that there was no one on the field but them, no opponents, and the bodies they'd seen be evacuated, all this led him to the conclusion that all their hypotheses were now colluding into one: something had alerted the powers that be, and now they were going out with a bang and getting rid of the evidence at the same time. 

The voice said, “—and tonight they will fight each other to the death! Only one of them will survive!” and Stiles shut his eyes. Just what he'd thought, but it didn't make it easier to hear. 

“What? _No_!” Scott exclaimed. 

Stiles caught him by the arm. “Don't, Scott—look.” He showed his friend the armed men posted at every corner of the field. “If we don't do what they want, they'll kill all of us.”

“I'm not killing any of you! I'm _not_!”

Stiles tried for a smile. “Nice to see that you think Allison and I don't hold a chance against you.”

“This isn't a joke!”

Stiles dropped the smile. “Believe me, I know.”

He looked around them—the faceless crowd, the men with the guns, looking ready to shoot them. They didn't have much time to figure this out before they decided that the audience would settle for an execution. After all, this had been a favorite pastime for people, back when there was no TV. _Come on, Stiles. Focus, goddamn it._

Fact: something had their captors spooked, and this might mean that rescue was coming for them, but they needed to be alive for it. _Also_ fact: not all three of them could walk out of this alive; the mob needed its pound of flesh. Scott wouldn't hurt any of them, that was another fact, but he also wouldn't need to if he could pass for dead. Allison—Stiles didn't think she'd want to hurt him, but to protect Scott, maybe—

Stiles took a deep breath. “Don't worry,” he told Scott, and patted him, spreading his fingers over the back of Scott's shoulder. “I have a plan.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

Stiles looked at Allison and she looked back at him, wide-eyed but trusting. She trusted that he would figure it out, because that was what he did—or so Lydia had said. He was a bit surprised by how calm he felt about this, his mind quiet and smooth like the surface of a frozen lake, with a clarity of purpose that he had never experienced before. He had been waiting for something like this to happen, and now that it was happening he couldn't find it in himself to fret over it. The only false note was, deep down, a nagging regret that he wouldn't be able to say goodbye to his dad. Or to Lydia, or Mrs. McCall. Hell, even to Derek, and Isaac and Cora, wherever they were now. But if there was a cause worth dying for, then Scott and Allison had to be it. It was a long shot—Stiles wasn't sure they were going to let Allison live, even if she won—but if they had a chance at survival, Stiles was going to do his utmost so they could take it. Maybe they'd be able to go back home, and start their meant-to-be romance anew, and maybe they would sometimes remember him fondly.

The bell rang, clear and resonant in the cool air. They didn't move. One of the armed men marched on them, shouting, “Hey! Start fighting or I'll shoot!” There was no time to explain his plan and deal with the arguing it would bring; they needed to move fast.

He still had his hand on Scott's shoulder, and used it to draw him closer. Scott let a little surprised huff escape him. 

“ _Pretend_ ,” Stiles murmured almost inaudibly to his ear. “You need to pretend. Like we practiced, okay?”

Then, so impulsively that he was almost as surprised as everyone else when it happened, he kissed Scott on the mouth. Scott opened up to him instinctively, parting his lips with an indistinct moan, and Stiles kissed him deeply, thoroughly like they never had during the handful of kisses they'd exchanged before. He tried to commit it all to memory: the way Scott tasted, the surprising softness of his lips, the scratch of his stubble on Stiles' skin. They'd only ever done this within the secrecy of their cell, and now they were projected on a giant screen watched by maybe a hundred of people. Who cared, though—Stiles was going to die and this was goodbye, so he poured years and years of loyalty and laughter, shared secrets and trials into the kiss, hoping Scott could decipher the message inscribed in it. _Thank you. Thank you for sticking with me through hell and back._

“Stiles?” Allison said, sounding confused—she probably had caught on the way he was holding his knife. “What—”

Stiles stabbed Scott in the stomach, wrenching a quiet _humph_ out of him. He could feel Scott's blood warm his knuckles. The elated crowd cheered and hollered.

“ _Scott_!”

Stiles had been looking straight at Scott when he did it, so there was no missing the startled, then slightly betrayed widening of his eyes. 

“Remember!” Stiles hissed, but he wasn't sure Scott was processing what he was saying. 

The wound wasn't lethal and it shouldn't take Scott long to recover from it. This wouldn't do—Stiles needed to hurt him worse if he was going to pass for dead, so he took out the knife and planted it into Scott's chest, as close to the heart as he dared. Scott coughed wetly and specks of blood splattered his lips.

Stiles didn't have the time to figure what to do next, because he was pushed off Scott and thrown down to the ground. He'd been expecting it—damn, it was a major part of his half-assed plan—but the breath was still kicked out of him and he was dazed from the shock.

“What the hell, Stiles?”

Allison towered over him, not trying to pin him to the ground like she would have in any other fight. Angry, confused, but not yet up to killing levels. Stiles needed to remedy to that. He swiped at her ankles to trip her off, and took advantage of the seconds she wasted trying not to lose her balance to jump back to his feet. Then, not giving her any time to recover, he threw a punch that grazed at her jaw. She tried to dodge, but couldn't completely keep him from connecting. Took a step back, blocked his next punch. She was still only defending herself, stumbling backwards against his blows, and it gave him a little thrill to be dominating the fight in a way he never had when they were sparring before, even though he knew it was only because she wasn't fighting him for real. He progressively got more aggressive, using his knees and elbows the way she'd taught him, aiming for low blows. He needed to get her to fight back, and, also, if he was going to die, he wanted to make it look good on screen.

“Stiles! What are you _doing_?”

“What does it look like I'm doing? I'm giving the people what they want!”

She clenched her jaws and he thought, _finally_ , but was distracted by the sound of his name being called: “Stiles!”

It was Scott, already getting on his feet, and when Stiles turned his head to follow the sound of his voice—

“Umph!”

Allison's punch made him see stars. He rubbed at his cheek where he could feel the bruise forming and grinned at her. 

“You getting your fire back, Allison? Are you—”

Sudden screams from the crowd interrupted him, and they were not of the happy, ' _kill him_!' kind. A string of men in black, geared up to the teeth, burst into the stadium yelling something indistinct. Hope made Stiles' pulse race. This was it, what he'd been waiting for, and even earlier than he'd thought. It didn't feel quite real.

“They're a SWAT team,” Allison murmured. “It's the police!”

Scott and Allison exchanged an excited look. Stiles felt a stab at the fact that they were excluding him, but he buried it deep when he saw that one of the guards was running to them, his gun out.

“Down!” he yelled, hurling himself to the ground just as the man started shooting.

Face pressed in the dirt, arms thrown over his head, he couldn't see what was going on, could only hear disjointed sounds of screams and gunshots. When he didn't feel pain anywhere and could reasonably conclude that he hadn't been hit, he cautiously lifted his head to take a peak. 

“Scott? Allison?”

Scott and Allison looked okay, both of them flat on the ground like he was. Scott had put an arm around Allison, half-shielding her, and she was pushing him away to get back up. The stadium looked like a war zone: people were running around in a panic, trying to escape both the police and the armed men, guns were being fired left and right, a few bodies were falling.

“We need to get out of here,” Scott said.

Stiles looked for the exits, but unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and they were rushing towards them. They could have dropped their weapons and surrendered to the policemen, since they probably were there to rescue them, after all, but the mere thought of doing this made Stiles physically ill. It went against all his newly acquired instincts to trust men with guns.

“We make a run for it,” Allison said, and contracted her jaws resolutely. She hadn't looked in Stiles' direction even once since their fight, and he tried to ignore the way it made his insides tie themselves into knots. “On the count of three—one, two...”

 _Three!_ They ran like hell. 

\---

The last seventy-two hours were a blur. It had taken them well into the next morning until they were able to convince Agent McCall that Lydia's powers were real, and more importantly, _reliable_. In the end Lydia thought that what did the trick wasn't her force of persuasion, but the fact that, just like everyone else, he was sustaining himself on raw hope. 

After that, Lydia went to get some much needed sleep, and let the adults working in law enforcement take care the details involved in the rescue mission. She woke up feeling a little more like herself, but unfortunately, her renewed clearness of mind also meant that she could worry about whether she would be able to replicate what she'd done the night before. 

Chris Argent occupied the passenger seat in her car—the other parents were crammed in the Sheriff's car, parked behind Lydia and waiting for her to get started. Mr. Argent glanced at her, and there was probably no missing how nervous she was about this, how afraid she felt that it wouldn't work, but he didn't try to reassert how important it was that she get this right.

He simply said, “Thank you.”

Lydia's hands were clamped on her wheel so hard that the strain on her knuckles made the skin bloodless. “What? Why?” she asked.

“For how hard you've worked for this. To find them. It hasn't always been easy for Allison, moving around as much as we did. I'm glad she got to make such a good friend.”

Lydia gave him a wan smile, and she closed her eyes, breathed in and out, and worked on emptying her mind. For so long she'd been obsessed with wanting to control her power, but she knew now that it wouldn't work if she focused too much on it. It _was_ about letting it happen, but on her terms. 

“ _Turn left._ “

“Did you hear that?” she asked Chris Argent.

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Excellent. Let's go, then.”

The trip was long, made that much nerve-wracking by the fact that they didn't know exactly how long it was going to be. When they passed the border to Oregon, it became obvious they weren't looking to a short road trip. They had to make a couple of bathroom and gas breaks, and when they got to their destination—which turned out to be the city of Estacada, Oregon—Lydia's head was throbbing from the effort she'd made for close to twelve hours. The area was woody, high conifers competing for the sky, and the weather was cooler and damper than in California, which made Lydia instantly regret her choice of clothing when she got out of the car. Everything in her burned to get further into the woods, but they were getting into enemy territory and they needed back-up for this.

Her part had been played, and now it was Agent McCall's turn to work his magic with the local authorities. Estacada contracted with a neighboring city, Sandy, for law enforcement, but both towns were too small to have the manpower they needed, so Agent McCall spent hours on the phone to get a SWAT team from Portland, the closest big city, while the rest of them rested at a motel for the night.

It wasn't until the next afternoon that they were ready to intervene, and it took some persuading from Agent McCall to let Lydia join the operation so she could lead them. While Chris Argent and Sheriff Stilinski managed to justify their presence, Melissa McCall was told to stay behind. There was probably a bit of sexism at play there, but none of them wanted to get into an argument about it at the moment.

“We'll call you,” the Sheriff assured her. They were clasping hands, holding onto each other like to a lifeline. “As soon as we have them safe with us, we'll call you.”

The Sheriff from Sandy, Sheriff Griffin, and a handful of his deputies were invited to join them, probably more as a courtesy than for the added manpower. It was decided that they wouldn't use the cars and vans for their foray into the wood, in case they might alert their target to their arrival, and at first Lydia was a bit concerned she wouldn't be able to use her power anymore, having relied until now on her phantom GPS to guide them. She shouldn't have worried though, and remembered how adaptable her power was: as soon as they stepped into the wood, she could hear the faint rumble of a crowd, and once she'd confirmed that no one else could hear it, she followed the sound down the twists and turns of the forest path. It demanded a lot more focus that her GPS instructions, and several times Agent McCall—who she kept close to, unsure what the SWAT team thought about her involvement—had to keep her from twisting her ankle or tripping over a piece of rock or a root.

Eventually they ended up in a clearing, and found a small structure built there, a stadium of sorts. The crowd was now audible to everyone.

“What the hell,” said Sheriff Griffin. “What's this doing here?”

“What's going on?” Agent McCall murmured.

Lydia's memory of the cry _kill, kill, kill!_ mixed with the excited cheering they could hear right now.

“Fights,” she said. “I think they're making them participate in death matches.”

Agent McCall's lips pressed into a thin line. “Those bastards.”

Now that she'd guided the party to its final destination, Lydia had fulfilled her role. She was completely excluded from the rest of the proceedings, kept apart with Sheriff Stilinski, Chris Argent, and a few deputies from Sandy for her protection. She didn't exactly mind, as she knew better than try to interfere with a police operation, but the wait was unbearable. She sat on the forest ground, too tired to stay on her feet, bundled into Sheriff Stilinski's jacket, and passed the time by solving math problems in her head.

The operation took a very long time to get started, or maybe it just seemed that way to Lydia. There was a lot of reconnaissance and planning and conferring to do beforehand. When the first gunshot rang out in the air, she startled, closing the jacket tighter around herself.

“I'm sure it's okay,” Sheriff Stilinski said, though it might have been more for his own benefit than Lydia's, or maybe for Mr. Argent's, whose hand had instinctively gone to his gun.

“I know,” she said. No cry bubbling inside her chest, so at least she knew no one had died.

They waited a little longer. Sounds of panic carried to them, barked orders from the SWAT team, a few more gunshots. Obviously, some people at least weren't going down without a fight. Sheriff Stilinski and Chris Argent were both taut as bow strings, seemingly restraining themselves from joining in the fight, which was probably why they didn't notice Lydia getting up and walking away from them.

“Maybe we should—” Chris Argent was saying to Sheriff Stilinski, when one of the deputies called, “Hey, miss! Get back here!”

“Lydia!” Sheriff Stilinski shouted. “What're you doing?”

Lydia ignored him and started jogging, pulled along by an instinct that she could not explain. The shoes she was wearing were definitely _not_ made for this kind of ground, but she miraculously managed not to fall on her face or hurt her ankles. Her friends were _there_ , she knew it, there was no rhyme nor reason to it, and she couldn't stay away any more than she could have stopped herself from breathing.

She saw Allison first, standing among a chaotic crowd: she was dressed in a dark long-sleeved t-shirt, dark pants, and she was holding a knife. Her hair was loose and tangled, longer than it had been the last time Lydia had seen her.

“Allison!”

Allison spun around and reflexively raised her knife in front of her. When she saw Lydia she slowly lowered her weapon, wide-eyed with shock. “ _Lydia_?” she mouthed. Lydia ran to her friend and collided into her, throwing her arms around her neck. Allison dropped her knife and recoiled a bit from the shock. She held herself stiffly at first, until Lydia buried her face into her neck, whispering, “ _Allison, Allison, Allison_ ,” and then she relaxed, melting against Lydia and hugging her back.

“You're here,” Allison murmured dazedly. “You've come for us.”

“Of course I did.” Lydia felt tears run down her face and wet the collar of Allison's shirt, and her voice was muffled into the crook of Allison's neck. “I tried, and tried, and now I finally found you. Oh, _Allison_.”

“It's okay.”

Allison started stroking her hair and Lydia pulled away a little to be able to look at her face. Allison was pale like someone who hadn't seen the sun in a while, and her face was thinner than before. Her cheeks had lost some of her sweet roundness and her eyes were hollow. Bruises at various healing stages marred her forehead, cheeks, and chin.

“What did they do to you?” Lydia murmured. When she tried to comb her fingers through Allison's hair they got stuck on a knot. “Your hair looks terrible.”

Allison chuckled, patting self-consciously at her dull strands. “I didn't exactly have access to conditioner, or to a comb.”

“It doesn't matter.” 

Lydia kissed one of her friend's cheeks, then the other. Then she kissed her forehead, and her chin, and, finally, saving it for last and making it light as a feather, she kissed Allison on the mouth. Allison's lips were dry and chafed—obviously, she hadn't had access to lip balm either. Her hands were scraped and bruised and Lydia took them into hers, wishing she had a werewolf's ability to seep pain. 

“I'll take care of you. I've got you now, and I'm not letting you go.”

Allison ducked her head, blushing. “How did you—”

“It's a long story. Where are Scott and Stiles? They're—”

A sudden pulse of dread cut through Lydia, dissipating the warmth from her reunion with Allison: what if Scott and Stiles weren't held with Allison? What if they had _died_? Allison frowned and pushed Lydia away, looking around her with a watchfulness that looked out of place on her. This wasn't the Allison Lydia had held in her heart all those months; this was someone new, transformed by her months in captivity. How deep the transformation ran was yet to be determined.

“Allison?” Lydia asked, her voice high with anxiety. “Where are they? They're alive, right?”

“They should be,” Allison said in a clipped voice. “We got separated.” She grabbed Lydia's hand and started marching toward the crowd of policemen and people getting arrested, dragging Lydia behind her. “Come on, we need to find them.”

Around them it looked like all hell had broken loose and the woods were brimming with agitation: most armed men had been taken down, arrested and cuffed, but some people were still trying to get away; others were arguing with the police, asking loudly what this was all about, demanding their lawyer's presence. A blond woman, tall and sharp and with a distinct air of authority, was the loudest of them. When Lydia glanced at Allison, she saw her friend look in the woman's direction with such burning hatred in her eyes that Lydia silently promised herself to tell Agent McCall he should pay special attention to that woman.

They found Scott and Stiles with the Sheriff and Mr. Argent. Stiles was buried into his father's embrace and didn't look ready to come out. Scott was on the phone, presumably with his mother, and Allison's dad was looking around him with a frowning face. The moment he caught sight of them, his expression lit up with intense relief and he yelled, “Allison!” before he started jogging toward them. 

Lydia had to reluctantly let Allison go so she could reunite with her father. Scott was saying on the phone, “See you soon, Mom. I know, love you too,” his voice low and rough. When he hung up, Lydia ran into his arms and he welcomed her in his strong embrace. He felt warm, and solid in a way she hadn't known she needed; she hadn't realized how adrift she was without him, not just because he was her friend but also because he was her Alpha, whether she liked to admit it or not. She hadn't started to untangle what exactly it meant, but when he said, “Lydia,” and she felt her name rumble in his chest, something loose fell back into place in her heart and she closed her eyes in bliss.

They stayed like this for a moment, until Stiles was let go by his father—who nevertheless kept hovering at their backs—and could take his turn at hugging her. 

“Did you get my message?” he said into her hair.

“Cara Robinson—it really was you, then. Yes, yes, I got it.”

“Of course you did—and you found us. You're so smart.”

He sounded awed when he said it, as he always did when he talked about her intelligence, and she had to squeeze her eyes tightly so she wouldn't start crying again. She'd missed him _so much_ , she'd missed all of them, and although she'd spent months missing them and had just found them again, it felt like the pain of their absence was only culminating now and that her heart was going to split in two from it.

Eventually, everyone retreated into their personal space, and Lydia seized the opportunity to examine Scott and Stiles as she had Allison: they were dressed similarly with dark pants and shirts, and Stiles' face was also bruised. Scott didn't look hurt, until Lydia took a closer look at his shirt, and realized that there were tears in it, and that it glistened with what looked like blood—when Lydia looked down on herself she saw bloody smears on the front of her blouse. They both had shaggy hair and enough stubble that it could decently be called beards, although it was a little patchy on Stiles. They showed signs of malnourishment and extreme exhaustion, even Scott. They also looked nervous, befuddled, like they didn't fully realize yet that they were free and thought they might be dragged back at any moment.

“Hey, Allison!” Stiles called over Lydia's shoulder. The Argents had joined their group, locked arm in arm with each other. “Allison, you got out okay.”

Allison had been smiling at her father, but the sound of Stiles' voice made her shut down abruptly, eyes narrowed. “You,” she said. “You _asshole_.”

Lydia was taken aback by the sheer hostility in her voice. She looked to Scott for an explanation, but he looked a bit puzzled too. Stiles, though, seemed to know exactly what Allison's problem was.

“Come on, Allison,” he said. “It was the only way.”

Obviously, this was the wrong thing to say. Allison tore herself from her father's grasp, and, before anyone could do anything to stop her, launched herself at Stiles with an unarticulated cry of fury. She threw him down on his back and straddled him, holding him down to the ground. She punched him hard, yelling, “You. Made me try to _kill you_!” She grabbed his shirt and started shaking him, banging his head on the ground. “How dare you! How—”

“Hey!” the Sheriff protested, making a move to stop her, but Scott got between him and Allison.

“No, Sheriff,” he said. “Let me handle it.”

Allison was still shaking Stiles, and Stiles was trying to get a garbled explanation out: “No—listen—they were going to kill _all_ of us—and—”

“You knew Scott could never kill you!”

Scott had kneeled by her side, and he gave a startled sound at the mention of his name.

“Well—” Stiles said.

“And you thought _I_ could?”

She raised her fist as if to throw another punch, but Scott caught her hand and gently folded her arm against her chest. “Calm down, Allison. You don't want to hurt him.”

“He _wants_ me to hurt him!”

“Uh,” Stiles said, “that's not exactly why—”

“Shut up! I _hate_ you.” Scott was restraining her with both hands on her shoulders and she was trembling in his arms. “I hate you so much.”

“Well, if you hate me that much—” Stiles started, and Lydia recognized the look on his face, the one he wore when he was about to blurt something very stupid and couldn't stop it.

Allison didn't let him the time to speak, though: she used the hand she still had fisted on his shirt to haul him up and clash their mouths together. Mr. Argent made an indignant sound; the Sheriff looked puzzled and commented, “ _That_ doesn't look like hate to me...”

The kiss barely lasted a few seconds before Allison let Stiles go. She was sobbing, shallow, exhausted sobs that nevertheless broke Lydia's heart to hear. Scott hugged her against his chest, drawing Stiles in the embrace too, and the three of them sat on the ground, tangled in each other, while Allison cried and Stiles murmured broken apologies into her shoulder. Lydia watched them with a sense of helplessness: she had no idea what had just unfolded there, and it brought home how much they had been through and how little she could understand it. She had just gotten them back and yet she felt like an abyss stood between them. No matter how badly she wanted to reach out to them and offer comfort, she couldn't make herself move.

Then, unexpectedly, Scott detached himself from Allison and Stiles and held an arm out to Lydia. “Come here,” he said. His eyes were red and he looked pleading, like her refusal would break him. “Please, Lydia.”

She didn't need to be told twice and she joined them on the forest ground, pressed against Allison's back and feeling her shake, with Scott's arm around her shoulders and her own arm around Stiles' neck. She started crying again but this time it felt cathartic, like with each tear a bit more of the weight on her shoulders was slipping off. She cried because she hurt for them, and for herself, but also because they were _alive_ , and the happiness she got from it brought its own hurt.

\---

Derek raised his head from his coffee when he saw Lydia come in. She slid on the booth across the table from him and he said, “What're you having?”

“Derek,” Lydia said, pursing her lips. “I can buy my own coffee.”

“Never said you couldn't. But I'm the one who asked you to come, so it's natural that I buy.”

Lydia folded her hands over each other on the table. “Alright, then. I'll have a grande, iced, sugar-free, vanilla latte. With soy milk.” He arched an eyebrow and she said sweetly, “Did you think I had simple tastes?”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

When he came back with her coffee they both sipped their drinks in silence for a few minutes. Lydia was pretty sure she knew why Derek had called her, but she wanted to let him process it at his own pace.

“So,” he finally said, putting down his cup. “How are they doing?”

Lydia breathed in deeply, thinking over what she wanted to tell him. It had been close to a month since they'd found Allison, Scott, and Stiles, and Lydia had taken to visiting them almost every day.

“As well as can be expected,” she said.

“That bad?”

“Well, it's tough. Tough to readapt to a normal life. Tough to come to terms with what they had to do to survive.”

Allison was the one who did best on that front, maybe because of her father's support, or maybe because she'd already had to face the darkest part of herself before. Scott was drowning himself in self-loathing, and Stiles flat out refused to talk about it.

“Are they... getting the help they need?”

“Scott's mom is making him see someone, but I don't know how much actual help they are since he can't tell them everything about what happened. Allison's dad is looking into finding someone who's aware of the supernatural, and then he'll give their name to Scott and Stiles too.”

“I can look into it too,” Derek said, and Lydia refrained from saying that he could probably have used that kind of help himself in the past, and maybe still could.

“It's awfully nice of you. Thank you, Derek.”

He looked away, obviously embarrassed. “I wish I could do more.”

“We all do. But I think they'll be alright, eventually.”

She wasn't telling Derek about how it had taken her days to wear Stiles down so he would finally accept to see her and stop hiding in his room. Or about watching Scott break down crying as he told her some of what had happened. Or how Allison had to ask her to stay over most nights, because she couldn't sleep on her own anymore, and asking her dad too often was humiliating. All three of them had barely gotten out of the house since they'd been back, Scott and Allison mostly to see each other. Stiles refused to even see them, although they texted and talked on the phone, and Lydia had yet to get to the bottom of why.

But Lydia was determined to see the good as well as the bad: after all, Stiles eventually _had_ opened his door. Scott at least was talking about what he'd been through. As for Allison... Lydia got lost for a moment in her most recent memories of Allison: cuddling with her in bed, kissing sometimes, feeling Allison's hair on her face as she listened to her breathe deeply in her sleep. They were rewriting their relationship anew, taking advantage of their second chance, but for now nothing heavily sexual had happened between them. Because Allison wasn't ready for that, and because she'd told Lydia about some of the stuff that had happened with Scott and Stiles and about how it did matter, wasn't just some situational sex. There was a discussion to be had about their situation, but it would have to wait until they were a bit less messed up.

“I talked to Sheriff Stilinski,” Derek said. He wasn't looking at her, frowning instead into his empty coffee cup at something that seemed to both puzzle and disturb him. “Apparently there was a whole network involved, using the dark net to let like-minded people know about the fights.” His lips curled into an almost wolf-like grimace of disgust. “They keep finding these... hybrid kids, locked up as they wait to be taken out for a fight...”

Lydia clicked her tongue to get him to stop talking. She had talked to Sheriff Stilinski too, and to Agent McCall, and she knew all this already. She didn't want to think about those poor kids, and even less about her friends being put in the same position. She didn't want to dwell on the fact that, for all that the network had been dismantled, the person, or people, at the head of it were still running free. 

“Tell me, Derek,” she said, preferring to turn the conversation around on her companion. “Why couldn't you check on them yourself? You didn't have to ask me.”

“I didn't want to overwhelm them. I know they don't get many visitors. And I'm leaving soon. I've left Cora and Isaac alone long enough, and now that I know that Scott and the others aren't in danger anymore, it's time to go back.”

“Without saying goodbye to them?”

“Do they even know I'm back?”

“Yes, they know—I told them. Go see them before you leave, Derek. The more people show them they care about them, the better. They need to see—that it doesn't matter what they had to do for survival, we're glad to have them back.”

He looked at her for a moment, an indecipherable look on his face, but eventually nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I will. Thanks for the update, Lydia.”

“Thank you for the coffee.”

Derek left but Lydia stayed for a while, slowly sipping her coffee, deep in thought. For months she had stopped living, stopped caring about anything but getting her friends back. Even once they'd been found, she had been mainly focused on their recovery. They still had a long way to go, obviously, but for the first time in forever, Lydia could see a future lie in front of all of them. 

When she left the coffee shop, Lydia was humming under her breath.

**Author's Note:**

> I know that this fic leaves a lot of things open, and I think that the story would probably need to be even longer than it is to feel fully realized. But I was afraid I wouldn't be able to finish and would let my recipient down, so I tried to wrap things up as I could. I'm glad I managed at least to write this much, and I had a lot of fun doing it!


End file.
